Here are two poems that center on women and trains. In one, the train takes a woman away and it seems that in her leaving one romance she finds another – in Valparaiso (perhaps). In the other as the freight train rolls away, an old woman follows her cats down the stairs to the toilet.
Romance
A woman down our street went away and became
the sound of a train on a rainy night,
lingering like a scarf in the trees.
To Chicago, some said, but all traces
vanished. Years later a card came—
Valparaiso, but faint, and maybe not her.
Now, whenever it rains, like children
we listen at the window. We know some friends
won’t ever come back, really.
But the sound of a train is ours, and Valparaiso.
-- William Stafford
Romance
A woman down our street went away and became
the sound of a train on a rainy night,
lingering like a scarf in the trees.
To Chicago, some said, but all traces
vanished. Years later a card came—
Valparaiso, but faint, and maybe not her.
Now, whenever it rains, like children
we listen at the window. We know some friends
won’t ever come back, really.
But the sound of a train is ours, and Valparaiso.
-- William Stafford
Late Nights in Minnesota
At the end of a freight train rolling away,
a hand swinging a lantern.
The only lights left behind in the town
are a bulb burning cold in the jail,
and high in one house,
a five-battery flashlight
pulling an old woman downstairs to the toilet
among the red eyes of her cats.
-- Ted Kooser
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