Changing Trains
I used to ride the train
from school to home and back,
every other weekend,
in an old Pullman car
built in the nineteen-thirties.
It smelled like my grandma’s house—
a little musty, like time
had curled up and fallen asleep
in the cushions.
Too warm, always,
but the clickety-clack over
tie bars and rail frogs
lulled me to sleep,
rocking me gently
as if the train remembered
being a cradle.
We changed trains in Omaha—
an hour or two to wait
under chandeliers that looked
like upside-down rockets,
pendulum-lights humming
above the checkerboard floor.
I’d find a quiet bench
beneath the soaring windows,
crack open a paperback—
sometimes Poul Anderson,
sometimes Clifford Simak,
and once even
The Communist Manifesto—
and disappear.
I built fortresses
out of sentences,
made treaties with Martians,
and explored history
with comrades in red.
I don’t remember
what I packed for those weekends,
but I remember
what I read.
The train always carried me
somewhere else first—
into other worlds,
other futures,
where girls could be scientists
and navigate the stars.
I’d arrive drowsy,
half in orbit still,
while the familiar streets
waited without question.
And then I was
home.
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