what doesn't change

Yesterday night, on the subway home from a very lovely evening of friends and birthday celebrations, I asked N. what poem I should post. She said, "a poem about a train," and I laughed and then went home and posted Neruda. But I kept thinking about train poems.

Roselva says the only thing that doesn't change  
is train tracks. She's sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery  
by the side, but not the tracks.
I've watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn't curve, doesn't break, doesn't grow.

Peter isn't sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train  
is a changed track. The metal wasn't shiny anymore.  
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.  
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn't change.

Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.  
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound  
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.

—Naomi Shihab Nye, "Trying to Name What Doesn't Change" from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland: Far Corner Books, 1995). As always, I love her.