Hudson River Lines

Trains slip through this station like pleasantries--
the river has been traveling this way for years.
Coffee and cake for breakfast
and you drove me down here,
sick from the decadence,
to wait, take in the waves,
think about place.
This place--the Hudson--and my new city,
and old homes, old frontiers.

All I write about are places--the way I feel in them,
the way they feel in me.
How the stories I tell about myself
are nearly all setting:
The air, the smell of changing seasons,
explanation of who I was there,
what I said and in what rhythm I spoke.

Trains awaken
my grown-up, my poet:
independent, romantic,
like buying chocolate cake,
taking off for a day,
coming back too late.

But writing about a place you contain
is like explaining gravity,
the weight you acknowledge in every motion,
the drape of a favorite dress,
the pain of falling.
All I can do is show the effect
on my senses, how it shapes my features,
and hope that you have felt the pull of a place
on your being, inhabiting your soul.

by Kelly Vaughan
October 9, 2000

back to Departure: Original Poems
by Kelly Vaughan