Train on Saint Louis Bay | Poem

Train on Saint Louis Bay
 
 

 Give the two of us your slow moan whistle,
 long empty freight train from out of the south.
 Give us your low light, Mississippi train,
 pound on through this gray afternoon hanging

 over the mottled crashing heavy waves
 beneath the trestle. Rattle me like a darling
 baby boy (something has to) this April
 afternoon while we sit with our fried food.

 We're at Amanda's in Bay St. Louis.
 The waitress watches me watch the train.
 I think that she has the same longing to go
 that I do. But I am wrong. She tells us

 about a man at this table over here
 who cursed her and her sweet bread pudding
 one Independence Day because he sat
 for two hours, and never saw a train.

 That's what we do to one another, she
 says. Besides, you get so used to it. Me
 I say, when I was young I loved that sound,
 because I thought someone was coming home.
 

- Larry Johnson
 

to Larry   /   to Moongate

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