to an ancient song
this train: rolling its iron music
over the marimba of
tracked wooden bars: a flat
staircase of parallel steel
and it’s all fabricated by my
American home in Indiana:
Etna Green: Valpraiso: Warsaw:
Gary: gray tenor saxophone-shaped
clouds: they spill crybaby rain-crash
on shatterproof windows: bleak
eyes of this train
South Bend {1991}
From: Crosswalk Casserole
Summary
“THIS TRAIN” by Michael C. Ford is a poem centered on music, aging, nature. The poem develops its subject through recurring images and shifts in emotional pressure rather than reducing the experience to a single statement.
Analysis
Voice
A personal, first-person speaker combines recollection with direct emotional address.
Style and form
The poem is musically inflected, line-driven, compressed, first-person. Its brevity concentrates attention on juxtaposition, line breaks, and the pressure created by what the poem leaves unstated.
Themes and imagery
Its strongest thematic currents include music, aging, nature, travel and movement. Concrete images give those abstractions physical weight, while changes in diction and pace keep the poem from settling into a single emotional register.
Reading the poem
A productive way to read “THIS TRAIN” is to watch how its images change function as the poem progresses. Details that initially establish scene or memory become emotional evidence. The result is a poem whose argument is carried through association, rhythm, and image as much as through explicit statement.
Explore this poem
Source & rights
Source: Crosswalk Casserole (Lawn Gnome Publishing, First Edition, 2013)
Rights: © 2013 Lawn Gnome Publishing. All rights reserved.