Train Passing

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This event on Twelfth Street
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coming out at night.
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Crossing the tracks, I see a light
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way up the rails.
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Then the bells and the traffic barriers
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clanging, swinging down.
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Deciding to wait I hook my arm 'round a lampost
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and count the engines as they approach.
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There are three and I wave
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thinking back to tracks by the pasture
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when I was four and five.
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It's rolling fast, its wind sucking.
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As the first engine passes
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a hand emerges
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beckoning from the black pit of the cab.
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And I stand there suddenly electrified.
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That hand is so seductive
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and the train such a mass.
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I can feel it in the ground
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and in the wind as it goes by
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just five feet away.
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And it goes by
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for quite a while.
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As the orange caboose finally passes
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I hear the bells stop clanging.
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and the poles swing up street by street,
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Chemeketa, Court, and finally State Street.
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That rolling gesture hanging in my mind
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could have meant anything.
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