Train Lights Comments

This poem recalls an experience years ago. In 1988 I attended an Alex Colville exhibition with a well-known Canadian novelist. While we were looking at 'Horse and Train' she asked me the somewhat-purile-but-loaded question, 'Would you want to be the horse or the train? ' I had the presence of mind to answer, 'Neither - I would want to be the painting.' In truth, simulations of the kind are revealing in heroic and mythic realms, but, I only note, not as a test of character.