Acclimate

The first ride is blinding.
Every surface from bay to beach
to boardwalk seems coated in silver
so the sun, first yellow then white
as on a kernel of sweet corn,
has no other home but the eyes.
The windows can’t be made
of anything but quartz,
so tolerant they are of light.
This must be the opposite of blindness;
not seeing but only seeing white.
One might be lucky to find
a herd of clouds or a pause
in the naked framework of the bridge
where enough support beams converge
to give shade, though crisscrossed
like the arms of neighboring pines.

Only on the second ride,
not the return trip but the tomorrow
or the next week ride,
can one spot the details.
The bay is quilted in waves,
patterned as a bolt of hounds-tooth.
The seats, once slippery from gloss,
are scratched with the epics
and artwork of vagrants.
In the east, there are buildings
of course dwarfed by perspective
but only half hidden in the blare
of their own window-shine.
The repeat commuter can pick out
the grit of the walls, the smudges
on the glass. The wood
in the pier has rotted to wool.

When the act of the sun
setting perfectly between 2 columns
of the opposite bridge in the distance
is no longer a miracle of luck or labor,
there is still the airport to watch.
A departing plane makes such an angle
with the earth that it seems a trout,
25 tons and silver banded,
hooked by the nose and yanked.
If passengers could step outside
the cabin and see the gravity of their flight
they would feel fools for paying for tickets.

The high school student, named Terrail,
rides the train but only from the south end
to the north end of the island.
Below him, his barrio is dressed
in chip bags and soda cans.
If he listens to fast loud music,
empty of silence and pregnant with power chords,
it is only to whitewash the gunshots.
When he’ll commute across the bay
for college, he’ll learn the beauty
of the little and the large things
around him.