Читать книгу Pruning Burning Bushes - Sarah M. Wells - Страница 14

Junction

There is no el train in Auburn, no steady rumble

like thunder on a summer afternoon. Suburbans

honk and veer behind my neighbor’s combine,

pass, speed up to the light, line up at four-ways

for permission to turn. The Cleveland and Eastern

Interurban used to pass through here,

the Maple Leaf Route curved slow through Newbury

to Amish country, carrying produce and passengers

in to the big city to see a show at the Hippodrome.

Today, the maples shiver along the upraised curve

as if a train has just passed through, but it is only me

or the wind. I do not hear the click-clack on the raised track,

the crowd of travelers standing in the woods waiting

for the junction’s switch to take them north or further west.

Now the forest and road are silent; last season’s leaves

crunch beneath my feet. Syrup drips from its spile

into cold, steel buckets. A car swings south down

Munn Road, wondering at the slope in the woods

and then the thought is gone. The sun rolls steady on its track

across the blue, though I’m the one who’s moving—I

and the farmer and the Suburban and the earth composting

beneath my feet, faster than these fleeting minutes.

How slow the shift in shadows. How soon

I’m surprised to be chilled in the late afternoon.