Saul Bennett
Cold Trail
I took a train once from Antwerp to Brussels. First I sailed
from Brooklyn when Atlantic freighters lay beneath the Heights.
But first I rode overnight with mosquitoes from southern Ohio,
pausing on the moon in West Virginia, Grafton and Keyser,
before first light short of Baltimore. Those still on they offed at Jersey City,
the B&O left no Manhattan tracks. They crossed us on a fossil
Hudson ferry roped at Liberty Street, nodded us on
a dented persimmon motor coach to the end against Grand Central.
A war before I routinely was brought by rail to the tropics
of Rockaway Beach. The Els of summer turning over
Queensboro Bridge from Second Avenue
gave you to see the receding sounds of the slivery city
from tiny open-air verandahs crammed with standees
on the Roosevelt Avenue tenement trail to the new planet
World's Fair at Flushing. Father never let go my hand but
Mother away up there I'm unable to capture about.