Where Are You Going With That Wrench

A switch went and is going to take up the trip.
Jiggle the handle, engineers! Getting out of the train
to fix it yourselves? Be serious! We have
some promises to keep here. We're ticking toward night
with cell-phone jitters; but it's not going anywhere.
Snoozes may bowl a dream or two, but no strikes. I prefer
the sensual contours of the bridge off there—
how like your thigh. But after all it's only a bridge

to Hawaii. They are not handing out pillows and should be
putting APBs out on this, our breakdown, the just
sitting here watching lily pads spread over the inlet
of the river where tide and current-well, forget them,
   they're
too slight to move a reed. Better listen to the good people
complain to their cell phones. You'll catch the anxiety,
   the loud
talk. It has not moved. Yet don't we know it's bound
for the Styx? Better to think of existence inside rock, the life;

over there, for example, inside that palisade, its scree
crumbling down past gulls to the shore where
nearby someone is Jet Skiing today, back
and forth, wheeling to and fro in the sun, buffing
the glassine surface of the still
reach of light-rimmed river-in slow wide turns
beyond the window that seals us from
the tiny make-believe roar.