TRAINS IN THE BACK YARD
Back roads country return to him as the iron wheels
Screech out and chug forward in the evening as ghostly
Mist cling to small aimless bushes in the settling sun’s
Light in the beginning night air.
Ringing crossroads show you stations, pickup trucks
And stop signs on the swift moving reflection of a window’s
Pane. Clothes hanging in back yards strung with rope clothes
Lines wave their pants and towels at him.
Split and broken trees lay scrambled in flying fields
That look like battlefield scars of war.
Barefoot children running in dripping mud bolt from
Behind wooden fences to see the fleeting train slip away into
The night.
Ding-dinging bells with flashing red lights ring
Danger and excitement as red and white striped guard posts
Hold a two car line of impatient cars.
The night puts on its black glove and the countryside
Turns on its twinkling dim, dotted lights that remind him again
There’s a little city life in the country back roads and he thinks
About his old worn out shoe of a house in the big city.
written 1998
