At the end of the line

There is a man in a yellow coat

              Taking the train into the desert.

              I could not tell you where he is going -

              But onward, away from the tracks and

              Drawn, as if by an angel, to a

              Lost cloud in the shadow of the dune.

              He walks the vanishing mounds, ebbing

              To his footsteps like sea spray onto

              A black ocean, where the cactus turns

              To an outstretched seaweed - a waving

              Spectre given life by a whim. A

              Moth feasts on its ear, and satisfied,

              Becomes an elk, which contorts into

              A temple that shakes in a hot dust,

              Haunted by the oneiroscopist

              Who pokes her beak out of a crystal

              Window to see the daffodil bloom.

              She sits until she is no more than

              A slight gust. He presses on night’s pearls

              To smudge out a nebular slurry

              With cork-bit constellations. He tastes

              Dark summer honey in the cosmos,

              And tilts. He drinks the sky, and sips the

              Blue tear of the last comet to kiss

              The planet’s upper lip and he drinks

              Until the desert breaks and flowers

The spring. The moon is gone, and Venus

Slips away from the cosmic belt like a

Siren caught in a stellar whirlpool,

And evanescing into legend.

And he turns, feeling for a gap in

The world, and leaves through a half-door.