Train Stop on a Snowy Night

by Anthony DeGregorio

In the shelter at the train station

The few people waiting look blankly through the glass

They stand behind, or stare hard enough at phone screens

To crack them, a desire for something else to be doing

Shooting like hot arrows, burning selfies to ash.

It is snowing, the first storm of the young winter.

The man of the couple standing outside alone pushes snow 

Around with his feet as if there is an important reason

Only he knows to do so.  The woman’s face

Is a perfect oval framed by her parka’s tightly drawn hood.

She looks far past the passengers in the stopped train.

She is wondering where the middle-aged woman with the rolling suitcase is headed.

The clicking of the wheels of her substantial piece of luggage

Further muffled as she moves out from the enclosure

And leaves two rows of tracks

In the snow on the platform.

The oval-face woman imagines the parallel lines of those tracks

Diverging, separating at a widening angle

As the middle-aged woman disappears into darkness

Heading toward the far end of the glistening platform.

The train leaves into the building wall of snow,

Its headlight blankets the white-coated tracks.

The next station is empty save an

Off-duty conductor catching a ride

Hours after his shift has ended.

Anthony DeGregorio’s writing has appeared or is scheduled to appear in various publications, including Libre, Abandoned Mine, Italian America Magazine, Aromatica Poetica, Bloom, Nowhere, Wales Haiku Journal, Polu Texni, and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.

He taught writing at Manhattanville College for twenty years, and in another life or two or three he worked in various capacities for the Department of Social Services, much of that time while teaching at night. Prior to that is anyone’s guess, but don’t let that stop you.