Watching The Station Agent in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Republic of Costa Rica

by Ron Salutsky

The dwarf came to on the train tracks
after a night of heavy drinking

following the part where everything quiets down
and two people are on a sofa

and one asks
Have you ever been in love?

Have you ever hated anyone?
might well evoke the same memory,

the loved, the hated, one. Here the ferries
haul islands back and forth while the townsfolk

stand still in the bay. Terra firma
is no longer possible, so the army

went home. The peddler leaves a totem
of bone to be washed by the tide,

giving much less to the sea than is offered
in return. It is Sunday anyway

amid the cattle’s low, and I repeat to myself
the word adios: to God, to God, to God.