[New-Poetry] All aboard!

[Halvard Johnson]

Train

Down at the station I am struck
by a thought that carries
me along with it past downtown
exclamations along the order

of “Look at me!” and “Here am
I!” and into seedy boroughs
of “No way!” streets and “Who you
lookin' at?” alleys. Then the green

of “I've got mine, Jack” suburbs
flashes by on the right, with river
sucked seaward on the left, until
the little towns—so quaint, so coy—

slide past. First, “Why me, O Lord?”
then “What have I done to deserve this?”
in quick succession; then, farther north,
in dairy country, a bite-sized town called “Huh?”

For an hour I brood between “Huh?”
and “Hmmm,” where there's a longish
stop for fuel and water, and I
climb off and walk around for a while.

Back on board, I start taking
notes, jotting down this’s
and that’s about these’s and those’s.
I hear a conductor coming through

the car—voice powerful and deep—
announcing, “Next stop, Eureka!”
I snap to wakefulness, fully aware
now that I’ve had a doze—on the wrong

train, on the wrong coast, for any
sort of ultimate destination—
so at the next station, the one for Muddle
and Quandary, I grab my bags, get off, and am home.


--Halvard Johnson

"If you have liver disease, tell
your doctor."
            --TV drug commercial

Halvard Johnson
================
halvard at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html






On Aug 14, 2007, at 10:47 AM, jforjames at aol.com wrote:

> This is also an invitation to the list to create an e-phemeral  
> anthology of 'train poems'.
>
>
> E-mail your poem about trains and railways
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jforjames at aol.com
> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> Sent: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:38 am
> Subject: [New-Poetry] People Get on the Poetry Train
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2253768.ece
> >From The TimesAugust 14, 2007
> 'Worst’ rail firm goes from bad to verseAlan Hamilton
>
> E-mail your poem about trains and railways to books at thetimes.co.uk-  
> we'll publish a selection of them on this page
> Britain’s worst-performing train company has hired a poet to soothe  
> the tempers of its frustrated customers.
>
>
> AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's  
> free from AOL at AOL.com.
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry

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