On the 9:23 from Amsterdam

Split with grachts that suffer little ducks
and tiny windmills, green with many shades
of gray, you promise rain. Your aqueducts

are grounded and your ground a dozen grades
below the sea, or so they say. On tracts
of verdant glaze an Utrecht morning fades

into the deep haze of the sleep one lacks,
the lag, the heavy sense of moving out
of time. And back. And forth across the grachts

to meet a woman named Yvonne. The route
to Nijmegen is paved with glass and sheep.
With geese, and cows. And deeper still, the trout.