NIGHT TRAIN SERENADE - "Next Stop Poem Contest Submission"

"Next Stop Poem Contest Submission"

Night Train Serenade

On still summer nights 

with the windows open wide,

I hear faint, familiar music; 

steel wheels on tracks.

And as I listen to the clickety

clack grow louder, the sounds 

carry me back to long ago 

summers at Grandma's 

when trains rumbled

through the city day and night.

Alone in my bed,

I waited for each muffled roar

and clank, the rhythmic thunka. . .thunka,

reassuring as the steady tick-tocking 

of the clock in Granny's parlor.

Those memories call to me now 

in the sweet, slow whistle of a train,

mournful and magnificent.

The serenade begins softly,

swells to a lusty pitch, dies away in a sigh.

Lulled by the song,

I dream of riding trains in my sleep,

passing bayous, backyards and bean fields. 

Mountains and meadows appear

and disappear, frame by frame.

And sometimes, lost in dreamland, 

I keep watch until the red light 

on the caboose becomes a speck in the distance. 

     ~ Marianne McNamara