photo: x bonnie woods
Varda,
Train Station
by
Donna Pucciani
No
use crying for what used to be,
a
station full of people
with
someplace to go—
a
grandmother in Croatia
in
Budapest
Cracked
windowpanes stare sightless
at
the tracks’ blind sweep.
They
tell a story in a lost language,
with
tongues of dust and weeds,
abandoned
farms, the cemetery
overgrown,
the church splintered
by
lightning, its belfry fallen through
the
tinderbox roof.
We
said our goodbyes long ago
amid
the shorn hayfields,
the
pens of spotted pigs,
the
gnarled elms and tin-roofed sheds.
Goodbye,
little village of unhappy accidents.
I
saved a stone from the road out.
It
shines like glass when held to the sun,
like
crystal when cupped by the moon.
No
station left, but a long-winded whistle,
the
screech of brakes on steel. Together they call,
“We
are the way out. Come.”
~
photo and poem previously appeared in Shutterverse2
