Station

In the weedy yard where the city stored light rail trains I mounted my camera on a tripod and waited hours for winter images worthy of my 36 exposures. Drivers drank from thermoses and flirted, tugging each other's bright green vests, lighting each other's cigarettes. One by one they climbed into vehicles, switching on next stop announcements. Folding doors squeaked shut; trains hummed, rolling toward faregates.Whenever I needed to reset my eyes I gazed at slices of cloud, at cardinals circling the bare-branched sugar maples, at gabled dormers of municipal buildings. Snow conquered curbs below. Flakes froze in hip-high piles, streaked with dirt specks and urine. I sought sublimities in their filthy layers.A strange sound—crepitant, destructive, like a blender stuck on a pit—snapped me from my trance. I looked up from my lens to the canopied platform, where a man in a vest was trying to sweep a squirrel carcass into an upright dustpan. At first the carcass did not fit the rectangular receptacle; the man resorted to wedging and ramming, prodding and pressing, until the echo of the dustpan scraping on asphalt was the only evidence of struggle. He jogged to the nearest trash bin and emptied it there, staring at the sky as he did so, as if to say, forgive me, you who maybe saw this.