POEMS/ On the Train to Cambridge
On the Train to Cambridge
Out our window a green wind
dancing silver-toed
over field on field of bending grass.
High above us, a hawk wind-hovers
as if his pulsing wings
could hold him there forever.
We rush past waiting stations
whose painted names are speed-blurred
so that we are off our map,
reminder of how easily we lose location
how fast our lives fly by,
how years reduce to moments,
our aging parents dead before we knew them,
our children bearing children
almost before we saw that they were grown,
chapters of our story moving to conclusions
while we were writing introductions.
Like our speeding train, we seldom stop
to hang suspended like the Sparrow Hawk,
who watches for a rustle in the grass,
then dives to grasp it for his own.
This poem appears in All Roads Go Where They Will (Antrim House, 2010)
Out our window a green wind
dancing silver-toed
over field on field of bending grass.
High above us, a hawk wind-hovers
as if his pulsing wings
could hold him there forever.
We rush past waiting stations
whose painted names are speed-blurred
so that we are off our map,
reminder of how easily we lose location
how fast our lives fly by,
how years reduce to moments,
our aging parents dead before we knew them,
our children bearing children
almost before we saw that they were grown,
chapters of our story moving to conclusions
while we were writing introductions.
Like our speeding train, we seldom stop
to hang suspended like the Sparrow Hawk,
who watches for a rustle in the grass,
then dives to grasp it for his own.
This poem appears in All Roads Go Where They Will (Antrim House, 2010)