introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- maybe i should 9:16 p.m. - 2002-06-17 "and if you could see me now...said if you could see me now...girls, you've got to know when its time to turn the page...when you're only wet because of the rain."~tori amos when we were in the car listening to that chris issac cd i burned the other night and we were headed for aldi's for some cheap food to fill our bare cupboards and empty refrigerator, the clouds were moving through that sea of blue and the humidity was something like zero and with my window down, i could feel the breeze of the speed limit (give or take five miles per hour) on my skin. and the music seemed just right and the air felt just perfect and the sounds of traffic and the green of leaves in june winds was brilliant and the houses of sewickly were tremendous compared to our quarters, but something about the air...made it seem like we could just drive all day and never tire of it. and on the way home, the trunk was filled with ten cent plastic bags that were filled with food to feed us for the next week or so. and the sunshine was playing hide and seek with the clouds and the shadows ran on ohio river boulevard as quickly as the mac trucks and the s.u.v.'s and our little family sedan. and then it got darker and the rain drops fell...plopped...fat and heavy and i meowed and you woofed and we laughed. splat. splat. they came slowly. and when we pulled up to the curb out front, the rain drops were heavy and cold like they had been holding all the chill of the spring we didn't see for this...very...moment. and we ran the groceries inside together and i moved my bike under the overhang and it was nearly time for you to leave for work for the evening. but i suppose that the most vivid thing i've been mulling over all evening is this: when i said that i should write a poem about the caboose and laughed at myself because i felt a little silly, thinking anyone would want to read a poem about a caboose and because i felt a little silly because i haven't had an urge to write a poem in so long....and it was what you said as you looked at me from behind those wire rimmed glasses of yours....."maybe you should." so. i did. * *** * waving to caboose when we were little, in summer, sometimes an amtrack train would pass on the tracks at the bottom of the hill behind our house. when we were little, we slept through the blast of the train's whistle at night but in the daytime, we listened to the clang clang clang as the arms came down to keep the cars from going across the tracks. and sometimes, in summer, the lights would flash all day and the clang clang clang would echo all day in age related degeneration and it used to drive me just a little crazy... as crazy as you can be when you're eight years old and trying to just get your play on and soak up some of those summer time afternoons. but where was i? oh, i was saying how we had those train tracks at the bottom of our hill, van vleck road. and we could see them go by speeding alongside the p&c grocery warehouse and sometimes, rarely, a few cars of people would ride by and we would wave to them, but that was only rarely. special. exquisite. but every time that we made it to the tracks in time, there was always counting cars and graffti'd tankers and then, the best part: you could wave to the man in the last car the caboose the end of the thing the tail of the beast and he would wave back his arm hanging out the window and sometimes, toot his whistle jollily. and that was worth the run to see the train to begin with. and now that i am older and live in a different city in the metropolitain suburb on first avenue two blocks from the train tracks that, when a long train comes, cuts us off from the rest of the world, no way out of town except across the tracks, i realize that i have missed out on a passing of an era, the death of a delight of youth. for now, when we two sit in our car and watch the train go buy, hoping it won't make us late for work or keep us from home too much longer, we count the cars sometimes or maybe spot the open boxcars, thinking of the jack kerouacs and the adventures we two will never have for ourselves but will forever long for.... and when we're watching the train, there is no more climax other than the memory and the sense of something missing as the train passes with little to harken its passing except for an index card sized red light blinking blinking blinking down the track and away and then, the clang clang clang of the mechanical arm rising to let us pass the sign that herolds increased train traffic and we drive on, and remember when we used to run to wave to caboose. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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