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 I am bound more to my sentences the more you batter at me to follow you – William Carlos Williams, ‘January’   A new train set changed the living room into her playground Just a little engine and two cars, red and green, going around the metal track, but the little girl imagined more, because the trains followed the curves, stayed on the track, and kept circling and going, going Her father sat beside her on the floor, like her, beaming      A very long line of freight trains took a long time to pass She knew it would come to an end, and was patient at the railroad crossing The cars of many colours – yellow, red, green – lumbered by, boxes on wheels, while the train’s lonesome whistle kept calling, Here I come, here I am, here I go      Freight trains, at all times of day and night, wailed through hundreds of small towns, just a gas station, a luncheonette, maybe a beauty parlour, towns undone by human failure and natural disaster, flood, drought, towns with no product but the wind blowing      Her toy train rounded an old track               Estranged mountains bulged under the sky, the big sky, the endless sky Anyway, no one could see an end to it, which reassured her, since so much seemed to be coming to an end It felt that way      But it seemed impossible – the universe dropping off, ending, there would be an end, and then there would be nothing, a no more, a vacuum of no more Her imagination couldn’t let her go there               A jumble of metal and tires, grease stains, goop, the shop looked a big mess The guts of cars, tools, scattered all over the floor, but he knew where everything was He’d say to his wife, ‘I know where it all is, just don’t touch anything’ His place was like the back of his hand, and he was just as attached to it      Folks brought in their cars and trucks for fixing Dented, broken down, crashed The fixer-uppers The ‘keep ‘em going until I get some money’ cars Junkers The shit that happened to their rides, to them,