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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Roth Poetry 