Train on the Island

I feel like a train stuck on an island.

A train is useless on an island
if it can’t cross to the mainland.

A train should have an itinerary
and a planned destination,
but I’m side-tracked on an island.

There’s no demand for a berth on
a train that can’t leave the station.
It must stoke up its engine and cross, on

some bridge, to the mainland.
But the bridges have a been mined,
they say, train stranded on the island.

And I’m sick, and me and
my gal we fell out, and I can’t
roll the wheel. During the Stalin

purges, the Russian critic Bakhtin
used his manuscript pages to light his
pipe. Train conductor on an island
can’t cross to the mainland.