Arrival at Vyškov
by Timothy Dodd
The train station door squeaks
like the floor of grandma’s house
or a smile from 1869. Entering,
facial umbrellas stare my dry days.
With a sneeze I nose in for one
ticket to Brno. In my country, no
one asks what I’m reading. But
here, a young stranger in violin
offers slippery words of bronze
pigeon, Bernard, Root guitar. Together
to platform, she points with her bow
across rainy railroad tracks to road
work buried under the Sunday morning
tarp. From its flapping and swirling
mist, alone, a spectral figure rises
amidst swaying cypress and butterfly
bush, resurrected from their digging
grounds, shocked by this new kind
of heaven where few will see her. Until
this arrival where phantoms move minds,
and Nina plays mournful music, without hands.