by Scott W. Williams
Son, what’s coming on track 1,
what’s coming on track 2?
And it was good to sing a train man’s song:
on 1, all aboard – local for Philadelphia,
on 2, express from Richmond.
Decades before the eight lane expressway,
years before one could hike
its ten miles splitting Baltimore city,
Daddy and I stand high over the Jones Falls valley,
looking south from the North Avenue Bridge.
Pennsylvania Railroad on the east side.
A smaller B&O Railroad on the west side.
Jones Falls River among the trees in between.
Both train stations are in sight.
Six lanes of cars, trucks, buses and trolleys
at our backs, rumbling under our feet,
fumes in the air, dust and grime on our skin.
Son, what’s coming on track 1,
what’s coming on track 2?
And it was good to sing a train man’s song:
all aboard on 1, express train to Chicago,
arriving on 2, the limited from New York.
And it was good, standing close.
Kent cigarettes and later Camel breath,
soft kind face, small mustache, sad eyes.
And stopped in the station, a soft engine idling feels organic.
The thrill as electric powered engines WHINnnE underneath.
The wind whisper of smooth Pennsylvania express trains,
their dopplered sound anticlimactic as they move on north.
The thrill of long freight trains.
The sure CHUNKACHUMK, CHUNKACHUMK is sweet
with the deep heavy B&O diesel freight GROWWLL,
carrying coal all the way from Wheeling.
No steam engines, no chooga chooga chooga.
Still the flavor, the variance, the odor of trains,
while standing on the North Avenue Bridge,
couldn’t be trucked, traded or transformed.
Son, what’s coming on track 1,
what’s coming on track 2?
Dad, it’s all aboard the Harrisburg Express
to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion
Colored Peoples’ Cemetery.
— from Juniper Volume 1, Issue 2