The Sound of the Train

By Daniel Lanier

Why do I feel comforted by the sound of the train?

The geezer inside, some cat with a matted beard and a wrinkled cap

sounds that horn like hell, blowing like a banked fish,

as it draws nearer, rumbling racket, toward me from afar.

Those grizzly little rounders, sparking and scraping themselves along,

while exhausting rank old diesel, and electrifying those wires. It

plunders along, like a novel that might not end.

It pounds upon iron like a blacksmith building bridals.

Someone would’ve robbed that old eastbound way back when,

As soon as it blasted that air away, waking every soul in town.

Seems that time has reared a different folk for now,

and somehow I feel solaced by the sound.

– Daniel Lanier is a college student who lives in Lawrence.