Heading to the Algonquin [vers libre]

On the train north
the windowed clouds
are white & blue & gray
the trees are green in Delaware
and Pennsylvania
pencil Pennsylvania

I write with a pen
whose black ink
flows without restraint
marring or marking
the fly page
as I think it's called

of a book in hand
while the train is rattling
at the end of May
at the beginning
of my second half
of a century

if the world should grant me
an entire century
the rattling train
anyway won't scant me
Pennsylvania Station
as a destination

----

[written Saturday, May 27, en route to an afternoon meeting with writer-friends at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City; it's a three and-a-half hour train journey from Washington, DC]