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Derailed
Cups on their hooks rattle
the train rumbles through the town
icebergs crack and fall off the roof,
they crash through two stories of chilled air.
Dad heaves himself off the sofa,
empty plate in hand.
Mother has a new electric carving knife,
the turkey is in meaty ribbons already.
The train is still rolling,
its high-pitched horn
blasting through wallpaper.
We are all a little upset,
for our little terraced home in England
has time-slipped into rural Ohio,
and the only person still alive
sits on a rocking chair
in a post turkey stupor.
Thoughts plow through a turgid brain.
He begins to imagine
that all his poems have been derailed
in a train crash
somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.
The incongruity if this vision
does not strike him as at all odd.
Intuitively he understands,
that If the Cloud bursts now,
he will never be existential.
The idea is almost appealing.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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