Waiting for a Train

When you are six or seven, that big black steam train

looks gigantic as it charges down the track

Smoke streaming in a long trail back over the cars

Hauling coal and coke down along the Monongahela River

***

My train rides were only in my mind as I watched

waving to the engineer as he leaned out the window

blowing that piercing whistle as it painted the crossing

with sound louder than that huffing puffing engine

***

I would count the cars as they rumbled by loaded with coke

Often as many as a hundred cars passed before the red caboose

appeared for a moment then gone on down the line

As we watched it disappeared from sight in the evening light

***

Those memories are etched in my mind as much as if

I had been riding on the train through all the little coal mine

patches of houses, all lined up covered with asphalt brick

and “All made out of ticky tacky and all look just the same.”

***

click to enlarge:

 

Paintings: Dwight L. Roth

Posting for Punam’s d’Verse post prompt of a poem about riding on a train. My family never rode the train, but we waited at the crossing for many of them to pass, as I dreamed how much fun it would be to be the engineer driving that big Pennsylvania Dragon, as I called it. I have enjoyed painting my memories of these trains.

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