Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Buried Train


The Buried Train


Tell me about the train that people say
got buried
By the avalanche--was it snow?--It was
In Colorado, and no one saw it happen.
There was smoke from the engine
curling up

Lightly through fir tops,
and the engine sounds.
There were all those people reading--
some from Thoreau, some from
Henry Ward Beecher.
And the engineer smoking
and putting his head out.

I wonder when that happened.
Was it after High School,
or was it the year we were two?
We entered this narrow place,
and we heard the sound above us--
the train couldn't move fast enough.

It isn't clear what happened next.
Are you and I still sitting there
in the train, waiting for the lights
To go on? Or did the real train
get really buried;
So at night a ghost train comes out
and keeps going...


Robert Bly

Posted over on Famous Poets & Poems

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