Dusk In A Crowded Train Compartment, Regretting My Life Poem by Ernest Hilbert

I stayed up two days straight with some old friends
In New York, and was charred, gut sick, still wired,
Stuck on the Northeast Corridor Express,
Suffering quietly as night descended.
I was pressed to the window, far too tired
To read, cramped by a pimpled giantess
Who nodded to a thump in her headphones.
The wrecked landscape of north Jersey swung past:
Telephone poles tilted to cold shimmer
Of swamp, rusted scaffolds, graffitied stones,
Great piers rotted down into tall, slow grass.
I focused on breathing, like a swimmer.
Late rays shocked an oil tank's silver to white,
A dying flash, pulled fast out of my sight.