Train from Chicago to St. Louis

Barren browns and grays
focus and blur and focus,
smeared on my window,
lifting the yellow grasses.
The sky is heavy
with pregnant bottoms of clouds;
the lingering snow's
ragged edges become mud.
I can never see--
I can never see it all--
there is far too much,
even in just one still shot,
and the world changes.
Still, I look out, panicking,
desperate to see,
hungry to take it all in
before it passes--
so I am suddenly stricken,
my face cut open,
overwhelmed by piercing joy,
when I realize
that it will all continue
every day that I have life.