I think of the blonde child on the westward train.
Over and over on the midnight coach
the metronome of her words kept time with the rails.
"Nobody," she said over and over.
"Nobody." And when the lights of Topeka
flickered across her face in a bluish flame,
she leaned toward the swaying aisle of darkness,
and she said it vaguely, and finally
afraid, she pressed her body slowly back
and said it so gently, so sweetly to the train
that carried her from one darkness into the next.