From That Way The Trains Came

by Daniel Lance Patrick

It was a healthy poor, the kind that feeds
parts other than the gut.
He would lie behind the garage amongst
the June bugs and the pricker weeds,
where the old peach tree once stood,
the one that gave his Mother more
than she could bake in all those pies,
and listen to the train’s dark rhythm
hymn of wheels over steel where
one rail meets the next played
like a drummer from the industrial
past, the Erie–Lackawanna line
clanking so close to his head
though it was almost a mile away.
The upstate overnight summer air
lifted and carried that train song
across the field behind his house
vibrating the ground he would sleep on.
Whatever happened to the lady
that raised the goats in Gastown? Or was it Milstream?
He didn’t know that part of town so well,
but he knew from that way the trains came.
He’d ride his bike out there sometimes,
and felt like he was on the other side of the country.
Whatever happened to the water tower,
and the trails behind it where they found
that dead girl? He used to ride there too,
come home covered in dust and jump
in the canal down at the end of the road.
The neighborhood crazy lady
said he was so skinny she
couldn’t stand to look at him.
Then she would strut past his yard,
bare foot, watching her own tits bounce
while smoking cigarettes in a tee shirt and dirty cutoffs.
He used to hear some wild sounds coming from that house
drinking sounds. And then the train would come
and its long song would drum away the drunks,
at least for a short while. He wondered how long
those trains were that gave him such a reprieve
and allowed him to dream
of faraway places that only the headlight
of a train sees.