Poems of time

                       now, and time then, each

                    containing the other carefully.

                        Linda Gregg, "Winning"

The hour before dusk, and the train sounds its coming near and nearer, the crossing gates lowering to hold us arms' length in our own passage, not from here to there but across the threshold every small town has between old and older, the abandoned siding and a commemorative caboose settling deeper into rust and rails, empty station building boarded up, the train not even slowing now that had stopped, is still stopped, in my childhood when I wanted it to take me wherever I was supposed to go, not knowing until my own children arrived that I was already there, the train passing and the knowing too that something is gained now even in its going, the town returning to the comfortable quiet of its staying.                                          

                            open boxcars                          

                            carrying the late last light

                            to where the rails meet 

                          ticking of wheels on rails

                            time now and time then

                            going and staying

In our own staying we are connected like the chain- stitches of a quilt, pieced together, edges overlapping, fabric all of a piece passed generation to generation, and  the same three old women come to a bench at the edge of the park, their hour between each dinner and dark when they bring the threads of all their old stories to be told again and again, the one who knits gathering them into the skein that is part of the town's one story, the pattern of their old speech a way of saying their lives, their words part of the articulate silence, until dark will lead them home, the night unraveling and following behind them, winding the threads again.  

                            long evening shadows

                              gathering the here and there

                              into one timeless gesture