Inner Ear

The yellow line on the platform started to lean

while the train was still a mile away.

I looked at the gap where the tracks stay clean

and felt the floor turn into water and clay.

Everything I know about the horizon is a lie.

The window in the door shows the city at a tilt,

a gray, dizzy smear of the street and the sky

sliding away from the frame where it’s built.

I grab the cold pole and I wait for the lock,

for the world to sit back on its heavy stone base.

But the inner ear is a broken, swinging clock

and I can't find the level of this place.