POEM--Take a Train
Coming home from church in WOODSTOCK to CRYSTAL LAKE on the METRA train, I found myself unaccountably without any thing to read. Nothing to do but stare out the windows for the short trip. Memory of other train trips was jarred. Result, another damn poem.
TAKE A TRAIN
Take a train, any train,
from here to there.
Peer half hearted through
the tinted glass.
Come into the towns
by the back door.
See the weedy, overgrown
backside of things.
First the crops, any crops,
shining in the summer sun,
that old barn slouching to oblivion.
Then the random outskirt clutter,
rusting junk in abandoned lots,
saw toothed factories derelict
with broken glass,
cinder block and steel buildings,
old and new,
strewn randomly along the way,
crumbling roads blocked by peeling arms,
impatient pick-up drivers
drumming fingers on their wheels,
box cars wild with the challenges
of urban war,
the smudged places where the poor folk live.
Pick a town, any town,
your’s, perhaps.
Come in through the back door.
See what the Chamber doesn’t
want you to.
--Patrick Murfin