Love travels with us

Love travels with us along the rails in Siberia.

Love is scrawled as graffiti on the wall
of an abandoned village house in Mogocha.
I love you OK!! is in carefully blocked letters
on the jetty at Baikal,
in a concentrated summer with dandelions
gone to seed.
Alexander is in love with his unattainable princess
in Irkutsk, writing of troikas and roses.
Determined lovers promising their undying commitment
on the city lookout in Vladivostok and
on the footbridge of a thousand padlocks in Irkutsk,
close the lock on the rail, and throw the key to the river
and wind.
Street graffiti is underfoot in paint and chalk,
pledging, avowing, declaring love
in letters four feet high.
The bride in a wedding party in Novosibirsk
has seven inch heels and Marilyn Monroe tattooed on her calf.
LOVE is stencilled on the inside of an empty goods
wagon
on a siding in Yekaterinburg.
The Ruby Kazan football team has a ruby red bus
gifted from the city that loves them,
and a heart is ringed in lights against the sky
on the roof of a building in the city downtown.
In the Kremlin Armoury, surrounded by the wealth
of Russia,
there are silver horseshoes with heart shaped cut-outs.