All aboard! Today Bjorn is the conductor for our Poetics prompt of Trains at dVerse Poets Pub. Come join us for train tales and travels. I haven’t been on a train in a few years but when I lived on Long Island and in Philadelphia, I was a regular on commuter trains to and from my destination. And even further back in time, before the routes and owners changed, traveled on the Orient Express from Paris to Venice and from Paris to Budapest. Get your ticket punched and join us on our Train Poetry Journey. http://dversepoets.com/2016/04/05/poetics-wheels-of-steel/
public domain image
The Haunted Platform
every morning – same time –
onto the train to my assigned seat.
we all have our seats where we always go –
same seat every day.
the two men behind me smelling
of coffee and CKOne and Hermes Terre
in front of me the blonde woman
who piles her laptop and brief bags into the seat
beside her so no one will be beside her.
I do the same thing, I always settle
in and pull out my tablet and read the paper online
while drinking from my travel mug of coffee.
on the way home –
same people same seats
eyes all closed or on their laptops
finishing tasks or a head start on new.
the smell of bourbon replaces the morning smell of coffee.
in the morning stopping at the various platforms
car fills up.
in the evening stopping at platforms
car empties.
at the platform where the train never stops
there used to be a sign hanging announcing the stop.
last year the sign was hanging by one hook
swinging fitfully in the wind: MAYF ELD
the sign fell earlier this year face down and
now soiled by weather and mud.
a bench is on the platform broken at down at one end
and the back bent at that end.
Yesterday a man(?) was lying on the bench
back presented to the track –
cold rain and snow swirled and as the train
blew past the platform where the trains never stop
faded dirtied ancient newspaper pages and trash
blew up in the air and then settled back into their place.
this morning the man(?) is still there covered with snow.
one of the men says behind me:
hey, that guy is still there and his companion
(I can imagine him looking up owlishly from his laptop)
says “hunh?”
on the way home with the train windows flashing like
yellow strobes in the darkness
I see broken images of the man(?) clicking past –
still there, covered with more snow.
at home, late at night, I awaken and shiver with cold.
across the few miles I hear the sound of the train
roaring past on the tracks and it’s horn as it
approaches an intersection.
I wonder if the man(?) is still there in the darkness.
a chill I cannot control causes me to break out
in a sweat and in the darkness
I press myself closer against my sleeping husband.
I wonder if the man(?) is still there in the darkness
covered with deepening snow.
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