Fields

by John Porter

The day train clanks
hungover through
birch, bog, sepia dacha
back to Moscow from Petersburg's white nights.
Somewhere on the curve of Stalin's finger
we share corridor counterfeit Marlboros
with a one eyed steel toothed chatterer
recounting his daring in battles from a war
he was too young to have fought in,
suddenly he grasps my elbow,
points and whispers,
"That's the field, right there, that's where the mines went off
and I was the only one left",
and we all stare at the still grass of the flatlands,
unending and unguarded in the yolky afternoon sun.