If I could write a poem today, it would be about the train that passes close enough to our new house that I can see it from the shaker porch and about how its great lumbering weight vibrates the desk where I sit and about how I like it like that. If I could write a poem today, it would be about the way the sound of the train whistle shakes loose memories from my Nebraska childhood, those long summer days playing kickball in the Heenan's backyard while the cicadas shee-wooed through the heat of endless evening. If I could write a poem today, I would write about how sometimes in the night the train conductor blows his whistle like some sort of melancholy symphony, an accompaniment for curious dreams, reminiscent of those echoes that rolled off the Catalina Mountains when we lived in Tucson, when our first born was no bigger than a song. But a poem needs solitude and a length of uninterrupted time which today are impossibilities, this house filling up with children and their relentless kinetics permeating every fold of my concentration. Why does the train whistle sound so lonely? Why do I long to hear it call?
Wonderful, again :>)
ReplyDelete