HOW POEMS FAIL

Some years ago, Ford Motor company stopped shipping new cars destined for New England by railroad. There was a huge train yard across the Merrimac River, just over the Lowell city line in Billerica, Mass. (home of Future Hall of Famer, Tom Glavine. One night, unable to sleep, I heard the sound of a single switching locomotive,  moving box cars around and forming up trains of empty car carriers. I could hear the sharp bang every time the engineer would add a car to the tree. All the windows in my house were open on a warm spring night.

       My dad was a Boston & Maine employee who worked around the yards, doing maintenence. He spoke to me once of how he would occasionally get lonely and a bit melancholy being out there at night. He explained how he would miss his wife and two small sons, but  he knew he needed to be out there making money.

      I remembered that conversation some 30 years later and I tried to imagine the loneliness felt by the men who work away from their families, often alone and isolated.

Open Windows in the Spring

                                                                  May 15, '00

                                                                  3:37 am

                                                                   sleep - my eye

The 

lonesome cold

sound of

a switcher

banging empty

boxcars

in the dead

of night-

oh sight

in the distance

folded back

is

my father walking

home with midnite

empty

lunch bucket.

-cold swept

 iron tracks

 leading

 away

 one

way.

                                    my eye

                                    empty now. 

...............................................................................

The poem is not universal enough. 

No one else can see my dad.

Since my dad died young, my seeing

him disappearing  down the tracks, uncommunicative;

I've made him up; but haven't 

felt his pain or explained his loneliness.

I got no further than conjuring up a vision

of him that is sterile. No dirt, sweat  or grime.

No slack muscles.  No exhaustion. He's a ghost;

and the poem is not that interesting.