Trains of Thought-A Guest Post by Laura Cook

My friend Laura stops by the blog today with a poem about trains and journeys undertaken. Please welcome Laura back to the blog people!

The Bilge Master

TRAINS OF THOUGHT

When the city goes quiet late at night,

and the light outside my window fades

from daytime-bright to burnished red—

as dark as it ever gets, in this place so afraid of

the dark that it banishes the stars with streetlights—

I lie awake and listen.

Seems like you shouldn’t feel alone in a city,

as one of five million, ten million, more,

but somehow

I do.

I wait for the sound of the train.

If I close my eyes, I can pretend it is

the same one that runs on the hill

behind my house in the wintertime.

They have the same mournful, low whistle

that reverberates in the hollows of my chest,

in my bones all the way down to marrow.

I lie there and try to forget the red, and the heat,

and not being able to see the stars.

In my mind, it is December, and the ice

out on the lake is booming, and I can look up

and disappear into the Milky Way.

I hope the train is taking pieces of me

back home with every whistle, every rumble—

sounds of blue air and frost and the

painful beauty of the woods at twilight.

I hope someday to wake up and be reassembled there,

full and whole, no longer missing a place

I only return to in dreams.

Until then, I close my eyes and listen.