Greg McBride: “Freight”
FREIGHT
When a boy, and young man, I rode the trains
along both coasts and the inland trains
through steel towns and coal towns, and still feel
the lulling clack of jointed rail pulsing
through plush seats and berths, through me,
and with me on into the night heading home
from school, or to see a girl, or go to war,
or to hoist myself into the shadows
of a boxcar standing alone at the edge
of town, sheltering freight stacked high—our home
too cold, too hot, neckties absurdly thin,
my whittling father, whistling at time,
and stumbling deeper into deepened dark,
the timbre of my kid-sister’s sounds
filtering down from her upstairs nest
and the kiltered gait of a war-dead friend,
though each visit veils more and further until
steel wheels ache into motion, a locomotive
heaves forward, towing the boxcar, jostling
side to side through the switch onto
the main line, the train accelerating
into time, mileposts blurring the past
behind, streaking over the smooth-railed roadbed,
chasing west toward forgotten.
Greg McBride is the author of Porthole (Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry, Briery Creek Press, 2012) and Back of the Envelope (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2009). His work appears in Bellevue, Boulevard, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review Online, River Styx, Salmagundi, and Southern Poetry Review. McBride’s awards include the Boulevard Emerging Poet prize and Maryland grants in poetry. He is a Vietnam veteran and founding editor of Innisfree Poetry Journal.