Monday Poem: A Slight Delay

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

A Slight Delay

So talk comes to a halt again
as the rail tracks curl off into the distance
parallel lines curving off together
like some long unresolved argument.

The train we are riding on
sits like a forgotten toy
while we stare out
through opposing windows
at landscapes made alien
by their fixity.
All this used to be motion
blur, and parallax distances.

I watch a woman, stripped to the waist
washing herself in a bathroom
that backs onto this line,
the slight distortions
of the pebbled window glass
making her flesh outline
shimmer like some mirage.

I turn to speak, desire your confirmation,
but - out of the corner of my eye - I see
your formal nylon-encased knees
tight together. The straight skirt hem
efficient, like a ruler across your thighs,
and your briefcase stationed between us.

Your neck is taut
I see a vein throbbing
under your pale thin skin.
You will not turn.
You just watch the blank
corrugated metal wall of a factory.
One man with a fork-lift truck
stacking pallets neatly.

I turn back to my own window
the woman is now naked
drying herself with a pink towel
before struggling into a white gown.

And then our train moves on.