By Claudia Hollander-Lucas
This poem is inspired by a train ride I took from New York City to Washington, DC in early April last year. The seasons morphed in the frame of my window from bare limbs on budding shrubs to fragrant huge blooms on the evergreen Magnolias that line many streets and yards – all this in the space of 3 hours going 80-plus miles an hour. The poem “this train” is transported from the east coast to the Pacific Northwest and from dark winter into a beckoning spring. I consider it a “sound poem” with lots of word and sound repetition to mimic the sound of a train moving along its track.
this train
this train is
a wrinkled drink
in this certain winter
nothing in mind as
her train window flashes
in landscapes
a shudder of grey-
white- grey- white
grey-white-grey
then a speck of pink
inside the thin strands
of liminal green
a woman boards
with her giddy flick of a ticket
like a newborn leaf
as swift as an hourglass
she empties this winter –
a flirting glimpse of eden
a suddenly spring
along the wet tracks on
this southbound train.
