October 19: Literacy Night, Lynn Emanuel, "From a Train"

I have a busy evening ahead of me.  I'm volunteering at the Children's Museum in Marquette as part of its Literacy Night.  I'm supposed to help kids write "letters home" from camp.  I'm not quite sure what that means, but I will find out soon.

This afternoon, I have a Halloween poem from one of my favorite poets.  It's about a haunted train encounter.  Sort of.  I certainly won't be sharing this poem with the kids at the Children's Museum.

Saint Marty will never be invited back if he does.

From a Train

by:  Lynn Emanuel

After night’s black abandoned truck—
morning is locked down tight,

and the sky’s brewing up
some trouble.

So far at the bottom of this
moment, she could fall off.

Coat hem. A pair
of sultry shoes. She is five.

Small for her age.
Meeting her father for the first

time. Union Station. Denver.
Behind the harsh horizon

beyond the tracks, a dark
wildness over the swing set,

brick yard, development.

Little nowhere, where
Did you come from?

The train roams through
the gone and vanquished,

some pale, soft voice talking.
Spooks. Phantoms.

He is the unclosed
cut of her.

Find the missing
dark scythe. Find

the jawbone of an ass.
Dead wood, cemetery, oil vat

shooed away—harried—
by the train’s advance.

First this, then that, then
a thrush’s three notes happen

all at once at once at once

and a figure
in a red hat.