Train Poem tentatively titled, Train Poem

When I'm on a train

my mind searches to find a metaphor

for itself

somewhere among the images flitting by,

broad glass squares of light streaming,

of life streaming,

by.

Next to me

she sits with hands folded,

eyes closed,

doesn't see the seagulls perched on logs

in ponds

there within the wet landscape

(with robotic tics of their heads, they watch us pass).

'Maybe it's out there,' my mind says, 'the picture of what I am. I am the pond...Or am I the seagull?'

'Be quiet,' I plead, ' I'm trying to write a poem.'

The conductor is young,

his goatee fresh, he is

trying a new look.

Hours in the mirror, posing in his flat-topped cap.

When he speaks to us on the microphone,

it feeds back, echoes.

He sounds as if he is closed into a metal room.

I suppose he is, in a way,

closed within long, metal, rolling rooms

that will hold him for years, his goatee graying...

All train memories arise, connect,

pass each other.

'There's a metaphor there,' says my mind, excitedly, 'something about trains passing...the tracks...'

'Hush,' I say.

I am flawed, it's true

but the train doesn't know this,

pulls me along, moving fast now.

Automobiles on the road appear to be stopped

like time is frozen. We slice through it

on metal strips,

it passes just a bit more slowly for us.

Maybe I will spend the rest of my life on trains,

so I can become a bit younger, day by day,

until I am a child again,

touching the glass.