Note on the Red Line L : Paper Boats : : The Messenger Wire :
A girl stood in the doorwell. Our car was nearly empty. There was an old drunk with a nervous eye pacing up and down the aisles. He lifted pages of newspaper and rested them again on other seats, the way one might do with holy text, kissing each. The girl reminded me of you. A single note rose, a horn after some stranger has died. The ancient poet Li Po wrote so many, in his old age he would go down to the river with a sheaf and fold each page—the verse exact, complete as nature itself— into little paper boats. He placed each of them on the streams where he lived, until they sailed from sight. And what I want to say is that I remember you, even while I am going away. Above us, sparks shower from the messenger wire. Petals of light fall to blossom on the tracks.