Train Trip

Now you have done it.
Brought tears to my eye
in the dark of gritty coal smoke
and surges of steam
busting loose from
iron pistons driven
eighteen wheeled locomotives.

"All Aboard!
All Aboard,"
after a glance at a watch
'as big as my momma's cat head biscuits'
according to a fiddle sawing
Copenhagen chewing country music man.

I grabbed my cheap cardboard valise,
gripped steel handrail
and climbed onto the Bangor And Aroostook Limited.
Heading south away from the lumber camp
and home to your arms.

After months in a dirty camp,
wood smoke, and a mountain of working man sweat,
the soft leather seats
and luminous interior
welcomed me like a drownings man's
first taste of air.

A mind hiccup of 80 years
shall be permitted, I hope.
I was never a lumberjack,
nor have I traveled the steel road
of the B&A,
it's just that your writing suggestion
took my breath away,
hard upon the heels
of my big brother's
story of deer feeding
and little girl raising.

Imagine Digger,
my big brother,
who strode through life
hating and taking,
so I thought,
sitting in his basement
with his toddling daughter,
creating layouts
in mini scale,
mountains, lumber camps,
trees and switch yards,
just so they can
recreate scenes
and share stories
of the Maine history
I so artfully imagine.

Now you have done it.
Brought tears to my eye
in the dark of gritty coal smoke
and surges of steam
busting loose from
iron pistons driven
eighteen wheeled locomotives.