Unfamiliar scenes:
scrubby remnants of migrant plows
that raped the Portuguese land,
left in the sun to die.
Flickering behind the lonely image
staring back at me
in the window of the train,
October’s journey quietly wasting away
in shadows of ancient cork trees
scattered across graying afternoon,
my mind keeping time to metal clicking
on measured metal, the train
a blur within a whistle,
rolling by a dilapidated shack.
Barely visible in the trees,
a hunched relic once a man
standing on the porch,
his uncertain hand attempting
to answer mine
until mine disappears.
Uneasiness now
on the window face,
trying to picture me
abandoned
on the dark side of the moon,
no passing train,
no whistle blast,
no wave of hand.
Black empty space
fills the window,
the reassuring face
gone.
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Cryssa
on the window face,
trying to picture me
abandoned
on the dark side of the moon,"
Incredible imagery Gene.........you connect the dots so effortlessly.....Beautiful my friend!
Bill :-)
Blessings
with such superb work!
ET
This is a good piece of writing, and a pleasure to read. - Bill
you take these stopstills and transform them into visual artwork; you are some kind of muse'd magial thing. i envy that ability ot see so well; the present, the immediate, the now and ehre and present. .. . i live in the bygones, the train whistles haunt me, beckoning my return; jsut like your words.
lvoe this.
nessa
stan
Black empty space
fills the window,
the reassuring face
gone.
This image perfectly expresses loneliness. David
I feel like the last breadth of life was exhaled & most definetly
"Alone"....its sad & frightening...but we came into life alone (despite the docs & nurses present) we were alone in the perfect world of our womb & BAM....so I do believe no matter what happens we leave "Alone"....but who is waiting? Like our Mothers greeted us into life :) I Hold Hope To Be Embraced With Love When I Am Truely "Alone"
I Love Your Words, You Know You Move My Spirit Gene :)
Much Love & Happiness To you Always
Embraced ~ Embrassé
Vickie
Newfie hugs, Rose
Chapter Two
Nick’s train commute from Long Island into New York City passes through a desolate industrial area in Queens which Nick calls “the valley of ashes.” Barges on a “small foul river” in the valley of ashes sometimes cause the railway drawbridge to be raised, and then the train is delayed. A huge optometrist’s billboard, a huge pair of bespectacled eyes, dominates the scene.
Nick and Tom Buchanan ride into the city on the train one Sunday afternoon. Tom persuades Nick to get out at the ash valley so they can meet Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress. Her easily deceived husband George runs a gas station in the ash valley.
Tom and Nick go to the gas station and arrange for Myrtle to follow them on the next train into New York. Tom keeps an apartment for Myrtle there.
In the City they drive around a little, Myrtle spends Tom’s money, then they go to the apartment and Myrtle invites some of her friends over.
As Nick gets drunk over the course of the afternoon he observes the small seedy cast of characters.
Myrtle deplores her husband to everybody. She explains to Nick just how she met Tom - on the train into the city - he approached her and pressed himself against her. “You can’t live forever,” she told herself excitedly over and over.
Right on track, Gene, you're in good companionship with F. Scott...Portugal is a long ways from New York, but the literary rails whistle in the mind of a poetic engineer...
Sage
(((HUGS))) and love, karla.
"the train
a blur within a whistle,
rolling by a dilapidated shack."
I felt a sense of loneliness; of yearning for companonship; for the train to reach its destination. I would like to have experienced that moment as the train rushes across a foreign country so far from home. The closest I've come is taking a train from Shanghai about a hundred miles south toward the old capital of the Southern Sung Dynasty, what we English speakers call the Westlake.