Postby P&R Pete » Thu Nov 23, 2006 12:29 am
Thanksgiving Eve, November, 2000:
"It's a cold night in the jungle, but the mood runs high as tommorrow is Thanksgiving. There is a fine, strong bonfire lifting sparks to the heavens, as the darkening heavens send down some big snowflakes. All manner of beverages are being passed around and the poets are clearing their throats. The jungle is just at the edge of the tracks (double mainline) and a Lionel 700E just chuffed past towing its original consist. Any train is possible to see at this jungle.
I thought it might be nice to have a thread where stories and poems having trains at their core might be posted. Where the lost, and the penniless (aren't we all after feeding our train habits), and the usually quiet might have a place to warm there hands and listen to a poem or get a dram of something good. I'll try and make a start."
TRAINS
What these vague memories drawn through
The mind like a restless tremble of fever?
What has informed these blurred images?
This night train halt in a Pullman sleeper,
Sentinel platform lights wreathed by fog,
A face white against the moist glass,
These moving lips are whispering, as
Steam caresses the locomotive's drivers,
A wet cement platform glistening empty,
As a bent black conductor calls, All-laboard,
As a whistle signs to departure's darkness.
More steam now in a vast passenger shed,
Overhead the engineers' crisscross of iron
Like a hallucinogen's etched pattern, the
Soot patina of endless departed consists.
A baggage cart creaks languidly pushed,
The leather of the stickered trunks and bags,
Eased along the polished baggage car floor,
A small lighted kiosk way down the platform,
"Paper, sir," and yes, wrappered sandwiches,
magazines, candy, and the always cup of coffee.
And then the pale long legs of a woman as she
Hands herself up through the open Pullman door,
Her red coat for an instant offering precious inches.
The blind wander of the travel weary,
The tossed minute firework of a cigar end,
The crash of a couplers metallic mate,
The violent outbreath of an airhose release,
Why are these fragments so known?
And now these thin oriental rugs and hardwood floors,
There metal tracks to carry voltage from room to room,
There the locomotive smokes and the haunt of the whistle
Runs along the wainscotted walls and marble fireplaces.
The passenger cars light the loomed wool and waxed wood,
Move through each darkening room with the certainty of time,
This twilight carressing the mind till it reaches level, like
A ship rising slowly in a lock.
This is not childhood,
Whose memories are these,
For they can not be mine.
(Tramp)
