Track 17
4:00 a.m. and the ghostly track
Empties somewhere into the darkness.
Diffused light shines above
barely warming the platform.
Instead a breathless chill pervades
the platform,
An arctic of ills making waves as
they pass.
Elusive safety beyond the yellow
line---
One waddling step beyond it
eternity.
On the other side a rumbling train
passes,
brakes protest jarringly rumbling
the walls
and ears that care to hear.
It protests at having to embrace the
rails,
giant magnets,
a mother refusing to release her
child to a Nazi guard,
an eternal conjoining
beating a steady cadence on a kettle
drum,
a 4/4 thumping life-flow
that won’t pardon the tracks from
its allure.
Fusty trains and musty corridors
Smoke filled with ageless scrapings
of humanity
Build a cocoon of birthless intimacy
praying alone that the silence will
end
and the world will collide
into existence on Track 17
beyond the yellow line.
Sy Roth is a retired school
administrator and has finally found the sounds of silence and the time to think
whole thoughts. This has led him to find words and the ability to shape
them. He has published in Visceral Uterus,
Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo,
Misfits Miscellany, Mad Swirl, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre and The
Eloquent Atheist. Recently, he won a
poetry contest sponsored by Newsday.
