Dressed Alike by Margaret Duda (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Dressed Alike
by Margaret Duda

Gloria resembled me with dark hair,
softly curled on a wig of mohair,
realistic dark glass eyes that blinked,
and a composition head and limbs
made of sawdust, glue and cornstarch
attached to a soft, stuffed cloth torso.

Mama decided we would surprise
Papa for his birthday and sewed
matching dresses of dark gold satin
for Gloria and me on her treadle machine.
Each dress had a wide gathered collar
and puffy short sleeves and we wore
matching patent leather shoes. Mama
called them our go to meeting outfits.

Excitement started as soon as we took
our padded seats on the train
and others passed us in the aisle.
Women stopped to stare at us
and all took time to comment.

Oh, look, she is dressed like her doll.
I love the matching dresses.
You are a very lucky little girl
to have such a clever Mama.
You and your doll are so pretty.

Matching. Lucky. Clever.
I soaked up the new words,
asking Mama the meaning of each,
as I slowly learned more English
every weekend on the hissing train,
bucking us forward on rapid stops.

When we arrived, Papa was waiting
on the platform. The door opened,
and Gloria and I ran into his arms.
“You both look beautiful,” Papa said.
“I have a clever Mama,” I told him,
showing off new linguistic skills
“Yes, you do, Mancika,” Papa agreed,
smiling at Mama with appreciation.

PHOTO: The author with her beloved doll and traveling companion, Gloria.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: In 1946, when we lived in Watertown, New York, my father took a better job in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Since I was in kindergarten, my mother said we could join him when I finished the school year. My father took the train to see us every other weekend and on alternate weekends, we took the train to Bridgeport. Since my parents immigrated from Hungary in the 1920s, we spoke Hungarian at home as we lived near Hungarian friends and relatives. My mother taught me English six months before I started school, and by the second half of the year, I spoke and read it well for a five-year-old, but learned new words every other week on the train. I always took Gloria, my favorite doll, with me, and my mother made us matching dresses to surprise my father on his birthday and gave him a photo of me in the dress. Seventy-five years later, I found Gloria tucked away safely in one of my closets. Her curls were gone from all the brushing and small cracks could be seen on her composition face and limbs, but she still wore the go-to-meeting dress and reminded me of the English words I’d learned on the train. I learned to love traveling on those trips and traveled to more than 40 countries as a travel photographer and studied six languages later in life. I had to smile when the American Girl doll with matching clothes for a little girl came out and bought a doll and a matching dress for the four granddaughters I had then.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: This is a photo of me and four of my six granddaughters (two were yet to be born) with the American Girl dolls I bought, as I remembered how much I’d loved the matching dresses my mother had made. To show how long ago this photo was taken, the granddaughter to my left just graduated from law school and the one on the right is in her second year of dental school, the one on the lower left is doing an MFA in creative writing at Columbia, and the one on the lower right is studying cognitive science in college.  How time does fly!

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: This is the “go to meeting dress” that my mother made. She gave my father this photo of me — I was then known as Mancika — to keep while he was working in Connecticut. I don’t have a photo of myself and Gloria in the matching dresses.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: As a poet, Margaret Duda has had numerous poems published during the past year in Silver Birch Press, THE  POET (UK) anthology entitled Friends and Friendships (Vol. 1), the anthology Around the World: Landscapes and Cityscapes, A Love Letter (or Poem) to... anthology, several poems on Connections and Creativity in Challenging Times, and three poems in Viral Imaginations: Covid-19. As a short story writer, she has had her work published in The Kansas Quarterly, the University Review, the Michigan Quarterly Review, the South Carolina Review, Fine Arts Discovery, Crosscurrents, Venture, Green River Review, and other journals. One of her short stories made the Distinctive List of Best American Short Stories. She has written five books of nonfiction, the latest are Four Centuries of Silver and Traditional Chinese Toggles: Counterweights and Charms. Listed in Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2021, she is currently working on the final draft of an immigrant family saga novel set in a steel mill town from 1910 to 1920.

South Shore by Chuck Kramer (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

South Shore
by Chuck Kramer

wrapped in a blanket of joy
that cold, February morning
when I was nineteen,
I roared through
the sun-sparkling cold
of Northern Indiana
grinning at the snow drifts
through the ice-veined window
of the South Shore train
hurtling into the heart of
Chicago, bringing me to

you!

your lips
your gentle, reassuring touch,
your arms that
enfolded me in a loving grasp
which left me gasping, rejoicing,
astounded by love,
amazed at the fresh,
clean landscape of my life
transformed by that night of kisses
and whispered admissions
which were the keys
opening the door
to a previously undiscovered world
of lush, dense ecstasy

PHOTO: Chicago skyline as seen from the tracks of the South Shore Line. Photo by Jesse Kunerth.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Love is a journey, and crossing cold, winter miles for the warmth of open arms is always irresistible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chuck Kramer has an MA in Writing from DePaul University and taught writing in the Chicago Public Schools at the Communication Arts Center. His poems and short stories have appeared in many publications, both online and in print, most recently in The Raven’s Perch and The Good Men Project. Other published writing includes memoir work in Sobotka Literary Magazine and the Evening Street Review, and journalism in the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, and Reader.

Terminal by Matthew Gilbert (I AM STILL WAITING Series)

Terminal
by Matthew Gilbert

Keys jingling in the candy bowl
knocked over by a bad luck cat—
I put them there last night. Too many
drinks after that fifth shot of overtime,
I remember I also misplaced myself.

In the subway, I sum up steps
taken from street to turnstile
so maybe I’ll find my way back
despite the locked-in mechanism
of a single-use ticket.

Masses of disregarded ghosts crowd
the bullet train. I weigh their worth.
But stop-changing means infinity
when bodies don’t belong,
and names mean cost efficiency.

And funerals mean personal days
we can’t afford because living
is out of our spending range.
I eye a figure fingering coins
in his hollowed hand.

At the transfer platform,
I contemplate deferring the train,
wonder how far a ten would get me.
I recognize a friend, his casual stride down
the stairway. He throws up a hand.

Six past years and still those poker
nights losing, small-living-room-laughter,
made betting worthwhile. All chips in,
I have forgotten how to wager
anything but my own body.

Over the intercom, a man announces last call.
When the train arrives, we all pack inside.
I wonder what kind of people live on Third.
The railways screech their daily motions.
I am still waiting to miss that train.

PAINTING: Paris Metro by Chronis Botsoglou.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Growing up, words and ideas never came easy to me. I found meaning-making difficult, and often I missed the point of reading. It wasn’t until I discovered music that the melody of language helped me to make connections I had missed as a child. Music became poetry, then prose, and I haven’t been able to stop writing since. Writing is always seeking and discovering the world around us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Matthew Gilbert is a co-founder and poetry editor of Black Moon Magazine. He reads for Orison Books and serves as a poetry editor at Great Lakes Review. He also edits the newsletter for Poetry Society of Tennessee—Northeast Chapter. He enjoys writing that crackles and burns with emotion, works that push the boundaries between writing and lived experience—works where language and form celebrate the reader. His work appears in Delta Poetry Review, Eunoia Review, Jimsonweed, Mildred Haun Review, and Across the Margin, among others, and is forthcoming in The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol IX: Virginia. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.

Present Continuous, Meaning Past, Implying Future by Paula J. Lambert (I AM STILL WAITING Series)

Present Continuous, Meaning Past,
Implying Future
by Paula J. Lambert

I am waiting for the train and
I am thinking how much I like

trains (the present tense here,
the present continuous, means

past, past tense, and implies
how often this happens) and

I am thinking of all that trains
have taught me: the way out,

a way back in, the journey
(journey is overused, of course,

but still useful) that tangle of
meaning when trains approach

tunnels (no way to stop a train,
etc., but I’d rather not go down

that particular track) and I am
standing here squinting toward

perspective (you don’t forget
that point once you’ve learned it,

don’t stop seeing it, searching
for it) and I am straining to hear

the whistle blow and I can’t stop
glancing over my shoulder to

where the tracks lead: mystery,
adventure, forward, yonder,

the destination (that’s another
tired phrase, one that never has

seemed apt, as tracks and trains
never end). I am still waiting for

the next train to come (present
continuous, implying future,

a kind of arrival) so when it finally
stops, I can step up, step inside,

scan the seats, and decide: will I
face forward or back on this ride,

will I arrive on time, will this all
be worth it, will the train derail

or just slide on into the station
the way trains are supposed to?

That’s what stations are designed
for, all that arriving and arriving

and arriving. But that’s the part
I never seem to get to, never think

about, as I’m squinting down
the track, looking for perspective,

straining to hear the whistle, still
just waiting for the train to come.

PHOTO: Train to the Cosmos by Aaron J. Groen. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I grew up a block or so away from the train tracks that ran through the center of my tiny hometown and have always loved the sound of a train’s whistle. It was a thrill to ride the train “into town” when we were kids—that meant going in to Boston with my parents for a special outing or shopping trip. Later, I rode the commuter rail regularly when I was going to art school in Boston, home every weekend on the train; two of my siblings still commute to work on the train today, 35 or so years later. As a kid, I knew the train led to the airport, and from there you could go anywhere in the world. So I never felt confined to that small town. I knew the train could take you places—and that, when you were ready, it could take you home again, too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paula J. Lambert of Columbus, Ohio, has authored several collections of poetry including How to See the World (Bottom Dog Press 2020). Recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards and two Greater Columbus Arts Council Resource Grants, she has twice been in residence at Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She owns Full/Crescent Press, a small publisher of poetry books and broadsides through which she has founded and supported numerous public readings and festivals that support the intersection of poetry and science. Learn more at paulajlambert.com. Visit her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Retirement Days by Alan Walowitz (I AM STILL WAITING Series)

Retirement Days
by Alan Walowitz

I am still waiting for a train that never comes.
I settle in at the station,
my place reserved between
all that’s forgotten
and what I’m sure will never occur.
You can call me has-been, used-to-be,
anything at all, so long as
never-to-arrive
only gets announced
in that garbled, godlike voice,
no one can understand
or let me tell it to myself,
sotto voce, entre trains,
with the camera panning shyly away
so as not to make a fool of me
even in the dailies.

Oh, God, don’t make me do another take:
the strutting and the carrying on,
the waiting for goodbye at the station
preceded by the hero’s angst
as he battles to select just the right tie
and a shirt that hardly wrinkles.
Didn’t you say fashion was a way
to make us nearer to the gods?
And for God’s sake won’t he ever
tell me what this waiting means,
and try to make my life work without?
And while he’s at it,
maybe the train could pass
every now and again, and I’ll swear
to all that’s holy
I’ll never try to get on.

PAINTING: Train in Evening by Paul Delvaux (1957).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I treasure my copy of Source, a little magazine published in 1977 or so. In the Table of Contents is a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and another by Alan Walowitz. It was one of my first publications and I’m sure it made no impression at all on the great Ferlinghetti. The photo of me (below) is from that same time. I’m much greyer and older, but I’m still waiting.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night, written trans-continentally with poet Betsy Mars.

The Trains Must Run on Time Even if the Cars Are Empty by Howard Richard Debs (PRIME MOVERS Series)

The Trains Must Run on Time Even if the Cars Are Empty
by Howard Richard Debs

I have ridden the New Haven Line
on the Metro-North Railroad
coming in from New Rochelle
with stops along the way
at Pelham, Mt. Vernon East,
Botanical Garden, Tremont,
Melrose, Harlem
to end the run at
Grand Central Station
cathedral of train terminals
where people from all
these and other places
stream together in what
seem constant waves
filling the cavernous halls
to fulsome measure
for now, not so.
He works the Hudson Line,
starts at Poughkeepsie,
I’ve been there too, on
the way to Hyde Park
up the river to dine at
The Culinary Institute
of America, wondering
why the Hudson Line
didn’t extend that far;
it follows the river,
where the Sloop
Clearwater sails,
the organization emblem
of Pete Seeger’s dream;
soon they will restream
their Music Festival,
for now the virtual Great
Hudson River Revival
an annual call to
environmental action,
for now without echoes
on the river’s banks.
The train goes through
Beacon, Peekskill, Dobbs Ferry,
Yonkers, Riverdale, Yankees,
few tickets punched for that stop,
for now. He tells of
passengers who no longer
ride, the nonagenarian lawyer
who went into work in Manhattan
almost every day, and took the
last train going home. He’d
hold her bags and help her
down the platform. She
doesn’t travel into the city
for now, but he has her
number and they text each other—
for now.

PHOTO: Pictured is Paul Kempner, who has worked 22 years as a conductor for the Metro-North Railroad in New York. Photo by Stephen Wilkes, used with permission

Included quote from article by Marilyn Milloy, reprinted with permission, AARP The Magazine, Copyright 2020 AARP.  All rights reserved. Metro-North Railroad route map, used with permission

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The theme for this series is Prime Movers, focusing, rightly so, on the people who keep things going in these harrowing times, people like Paul Kempner. But infrastructure, institutions, organizations, also have a major role as prime movers in a real sense too. The Metro-North Railroad is one such entity. For information about an important way those who may wish to do so can help others during the pandemic and receive a special gift for such help go to TrainsMustRun and thank you for that.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally in numerous publications. His photography is featured in select publications, including in Rattle online as “Ekphrastic Challenge” artist and guest editor. His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words (Scarlet Leaf Publishing), is the recipient of a 2017 Best Book Award and 2018 Book Excellence Award. His new chapbook Political, (Cyberwit.net) will be released in October 2020. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust, forthcoming in 2021 from Vallentine Mitchell of London, publisher of the first English language edition of the diary of Anne Frank. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory.

The good things by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad (PRIME MOVERS Series)

The good things
by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

She works at Roseville station—
a positive presence on the platform,
well turned out in her neatly pressed
New South Wales railway staff uniform,
with always a kind word and a helping hand
for the older folks, and young preschoolers
dangling on their parents’ arms.

She likes ethnic jewelry. I’ve seen her
wear metal earrings—a touch
of whimsy to her outfit. And this January,
at the risk of looking completely weird,
I got her a set of peacock motif earrings,
which I bought from an artisan
on my holiday in India.

I wished her a Happy 2020. I told her
that it’s my fifth year living in Roseville—
that the friendliness of locals like her went
a long way in making newcomers like me
feel welcome and at home.

I will never forget the surprise in
her blue irises—how her eyes grew
bloodshot. And I remember how the tears
just wouldn’t stop, how we shook hands
warmly, how overcome we both were
with emotion, in that moment.

Soon afterwards, the pandemic came
in full force. Throughout the lockdown
I’ve seen her hard at work, masked and gloved,
managing the station—white flags,
and whistles in hand, eyes always crimped
in smiles behind her mask.

Today she was on the platform, chatting
with the older folks lugging shopping,
laboring up the stairs. She told them
not to worry. Despite the pandemic
the upgrade would come—the lifts
and accessible toilets. The good things
were coming to Roseville. And today I saw
those earrings dangling from her lobes—
the silver silhouette of an Indian peacock
glinting in the sun.

PHOTO: 2020 gift box by Sasha Soloshenko91, used by permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I am a recent immigrant to Australia. One of the kindest people I have met in my community is a middle-aged train staff member who works on the North Shore train line. I remember how happy and at ease I felt when she greeted me with a warm hello at the local station, the first time I took the train. This poem is for that train staff member, whom I see every day, and who continues to work tirelessly during these uncertain times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an artist, poet, and pianist of Indian heritage. She was raised in the Middle East. She started writing poetry from the age of seven. In 1990, during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, she was a war refugee in Operation Desert Storm. She holds a Masters in English, and is a member of The North Shore Poetry Project. Her recent works have been published in Neologism Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, Nigerian Voices Anthology, Poetica Review, and several other print and online international literary journals and anthologies. Her poem “Mizpah,” about a mother who hopes for the return of her son who was taken as a prisoner of war, was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Glass House Poetry Awards 2020. She is the co-editor of the Australian literary journal Authora Australis. She regularly performs her poetry and exhibits her art at shows in Sydney.

Promontory by Rachel Hawk (LANDMARKS Series)

Promontory
by Rachel Hawk

In August 1965, my friend Barbara and I drove out of Ohio and headed to San Francisco. Unlike our friends, we weren’t ready to get married, buy houses, and have kids. And thought we might never be. We had other dreams and imagined livelier, more varied lives in a beautiful city by the ocean. Because we were nurses, finding work would be easy. Zigzagging across the country, we stopped whenever something caught our fancy. The Golden Spike National Historic Site did just that.

In 1869, two teams of men completed the building of this country’s first transcontinental railroad, laboring toward each other from Iowa and California. For 1,912 miles they  burrowed tunnels, built bridges, and laid down track. It was a massive, arduous, dangerous undertaking. Finally, on May 10th at Promontory Point, Utah Territory, the men hammered a commemorative gold spike into the last, connecting rail, joining east to west. Surrounded by tents, saloons, and boarding houses, the crowd of dignitaries, railroad workers and owners brandished their whiskey bottles, posed for pictures, and cheered. The dangers of crossing multiple raging rivers, deserts, and mountain ranges in horse-drawn wagons had been conquered, making it possible for thousands to travel safely. It had been considered an impossible dream.

When Barbara and I visited, everything — trains, buildings, even the tracks themselves — were gone. As true of many landmarks, there was only a descriptive sign; nothing remained but the story. It was enough. Standing in the wind of that vast beautiful high-desert plain, the excitement of a great endeavor caught us. This was a monument not only to hard work and accomplishment, but also to dreams — and we had our own.

PHOTOGRAPH: National Park Service sign for the Golden Spike National Historic Site, Promontory Summit, Utah, by Sue Smith, used by permission.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Between 1863 and 1869, as many as 20,000 Chinese workers helped build the treacherous western portion of the Transcontinental Railroad that began in Sacramento, California. When not enough white men signed up, the railroad began hiring Chinese men for the backbreaking labor. Chinese workers blasted tunnels through mountains, cut through dense forests, filled deep ravines, constructed long trestles, and built enormous retaining walls. Chinese workers were paid 30-50% less than their white counterparts and were given the most dangerous work. As they approached the meeting point with the Union Pacific at Promontory Summit, Utah, thousands of Chinese workers laid down 10 miles of track in less than 24 hours. Progress came at great cost: Chinese civic organizations retrieved an estimated 1,200 bodies along the route and sent them to China for burial. The transcontinental railroad’s completion allowed travelers to journey across the country in a week — a trip that had previously taken more than a month. Politicians pointed to the country’s great achievement, failing to mention the foreign-born workers who had made it possible.

Source: “Remember the Chinese immigrants who built America’s first transcontinental railroad” by Gordon H. Chang, professor of history, Stanford University, Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2019.

PHOTO: Chinese workers toil in a treacherous stretch of the Transcontinental Railroad in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, late 1860s. (Source: National Park Service.)

PHOTO: Ceremony on May 10, 1969 for installing the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, representing the completion of the First U.S. Transcontinental Railroad. At center left, Samuel S. Montague, Central Pacific Railroad, shakes hands with Grenville M. Dodge, Union Pacific Railroad (center right). They are surrounded by men who built the railway — but Chinese workers are noticeably absent. Many of the laborers who worked their way west on the Union Pacific Railroad were Irish immigrants — about 3,000 in all, many of whom were veterans of the Union Army in the Civil War. They, too, faced dangerous working conditions and hardships. Photo: Andrew J. Russell, Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, used by permission.)

PHOTO: In 2014, on the 145th anniversary of the first transcontinental railroad’s completion at Promontory Summit, Utah, a group of Asian-Americans, including descendants of Chinese railroad workers, recreate the iconic photo taken without their ancestors in 1869. Photo (c) Corky Lee, All Rights Reserved. 

PHOTO: Plaque at Promontory Summit, Utah, placed in 1969 to commemorate the centennial of the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad and to honor “the Chinese workers of the Central Pacific Railroad whose indomitable courage made it possible.”

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Today, at the Golden Spike National Historic Site, visitors can see full-sized exact replicas of the original (and colorful!) Victorian-era locomotives. According to the National Park Service website, the site now features a visitors’ center as well as driving tours, hiking trails, and re-enactments of driving the Last Spike.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rachel Hawk facilitates a weekly writers’ forum. Her personal essays explore both the interior world of the narrator and the nuances within relationships. Her current work utilizes elements of memoir in narrative form.

Sammy, poem by Neil Creighton (LOST AND FOUND Poetry and Prose Series)

Sammy
by Neil Creighton

The Indian Pacific from Perth
has arrived on Platform 2.

We poured from the train.
The platform surged with people.
Baggage handlers scurried around.
Grey day. Spiteful rain. Cold wind.

Better check on your dog, son.

Sammy was in a dog-cage in the baggage car.
He was eight. I was sixteen.
His puppy self had lain in my arms.
Together we paddled the glittering lake,
he in the front, alert, mouth open, excited.
He loped alongside my bicycle.
He bounded comically through high grass.
He lay at my feet in the evening.
He was my brother and my friend.

There’s a dog loose on the tracks.

I barely heard that announcement
as I wandered down to the baggage car.
I’d checked on him on each stop.
Now I’d take him to our new home.

I’ve come for my dog.

Jeez, mate, sorry, he’s gone,
We tried to get him out of his cage.
He held back and slipped his collar
and he bolted.

I ran through the crowd, searching the tracks,
calling and whistling again and again.
No dog loped up happily to lick my hand.

Finally I stopped.
He was gone,
3,400 kilometres from his home,
running in a strange city
full of noise and trams and cars and trains,
increasingly desperate, hungry, alone.

The day was cloudy, cold and wet.
I reached for my sunglasses
To hide my grief, though tears flowed freely.

Sammy, my dear friend,
don’t run too far.
Find someone to take you in.
Let them love you like I do.

In a sad huddle, my family waited.
I walked past them towards the platform steps.
They seemed so very far away.

IMAGE: “Boy with a Dog” by Pablo Picasso (1905).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I have always loved dogs, and although my father was in the Royal Australian Air Force and we led a gypsy life, criss-crossing the Australian continent, my dog always came with us. My poem recounts what happened when we travelled from Perth to Melbourne one cold, wet day.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My dogs, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Miss Eliza Bennet (Darcy and Lizzie).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Neil Creighton is an Australian poet whose work as a teacher of English and Drama brought him into close contact with thousands of young lives, most happy and triumphant but too many tragically filled with neglect. It made him intensely aware of how opportunity is so unequally proportioned and his work often reflects strong interest in social justice. His recent publications include Poetry Quarterly, Autumn Sky Daily, Praxis mag online,  Rat’s Ass Review, and Verse-Virtual, where he is a contributing editor. He blogs at windofflowers.blogspot.com.au.

The Trains by Adele Kenny (Me, as a Child Poetry Series)

The Trains
by Adele Kenny

We felt them first. Fingers pressed to the rails,
     a dull rumble filled our hands and hummed into
our arms before the cone of light, the great clatter

of metal against metal. Trestled high, above the
     bridge on Grand Avenue, we knew those tracks
went on forever, between trees that lined the ties

like stations of the cross. The hill was forbidden but
     holy, thick with clover, ripe with berries in spring.
The year I was nine, an April blizzard swept the

sky and we went to the trains in the dark. The wires
     strummed into sparks, the rails were a dazzle of
shadows. Our faces – ghosts of our selves – reflected

in every train car window, lines of breath etched in
     passing glass. Above us, chimney smoke hung like
smears of candle grease among the clouds.

We were grubby and poor, but we believed. We said
     our prayers, ate fish on Fridays, and never rode
those trains. We could only kneel in something like

wonder, something like praise, and wait for the
     tracks’ reverent shudder. The memory is a gauze
engine that time blows through and keeps me small.

SOURCE: Previously Published in What Matters (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2011).

PHOTOGRAPH: Adele Kenny, age nine,  Rahway, New Jersey (Photo by William Kenny). In the poem, the author mentions the April she was nine—that’s the same April this picture was taken.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Virginia Woolf called childhood “a great cathedral space.” “The Trains” is a poem about a “cathedral time” that continues to inform my present.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adele Kenny’s poems, reviews, and articles have been published in journals worldwide, and her poems have appeared in books and anthologies published by Crown, Tuttle, Shambhala, and McGraw-Hill. She is the recipient of various awards, including two poetry fellowships from the New Jersey State Arts Council and Kean University’s Distinguished Alumni Award. A former creative writing professor, she is founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series and poetry editor of Tiferet Journal. She has read in the US, England, Ireland, and France, and has twice been a featured reader at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Visit her at www.Adelekenny.com and www.adelekenny.blogspot.com.