print previewback STEVE SCAFIDI
The Dragon
Traveling by train between cities in the East
between engagements to speak—often
too tired to sleep,
his white shirt like a nightgown, he climbed
out of the rocking bed and walked stumbling
from car to car
in the dark pacing the full length of the thing
and back thinking and walking
in the rumbling halls
of the dark train—the whistle a scream as if
a dragon hunted the mountains hurtling
itself through the woods,
the iron body rattling to break, the wheels
humming and the coal fire mind
of the dragon furious
and clear diving down. It wasn’t looking
for him, although it was him,
Abraham Lincoln,
bleary in the belly of the thing going
down through the dark
his dying country found. 