THE TRACK OF THE CORNFIELD

The memories of childhood can sometimes flood into our conscious world and I ask myself, why? Why do all of the sudden we remember something we have not thought about in decades? Is it a lesson that has implanted itself in our minds? That we need for our futures? Does that make life an arranged journey? So many questions and I have come up with this one answer for me, so I can write poetry!

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”
Albert Einstein

The Tracks of the Cornfield

Mesmerizing cornfields
in Maryland,
open car windows,
we drove on
traffic free roads until rising
in the distance was a diner,
The Paper Moon Kitchen,
which shared the dry
over-farmed, forgotten earth--
the soft brutality of life.
I was a kid, 12 or so
years of precious life,
1 harvest or so after
my father’s death.

Through tall August grass,
the creamy brown
kind that tickles your legs
as you skip through it,
sat a deserted and dented
black freight train cart;
an insignificant tombstone
standing solitary in a
neighboring field.

Sitting at the square table,
blue checkered curtains,
the grownups talk in code.
The 5 of us are released with
legs in full throttle,
stinging blades of dried grass
slapping any bare flesh;
we approach the carcass
of forgotten locomotion,
leaving tears far behind us.

We descend upon our train cart
climbing inside, on top
like a congregation
of cawing crows.
We talked of trips to freedom as a
dry summer breeze came through
the broken bare windows;

I stare and pray for my freedom
as I imagine my leather luggage
stored in the outside compartment,
and how my train was moving
into my future
I asked the conductor,
“How long is this trip to somewhere?”
as I fixed my bonnet and
straightened my plaid skirt
while sitting on a dusty wood
floor of the shell of a cart.

The dry air moved through
a train that did not travel,
like the stillness of a
storming summer heat.
I see the reality of
the steal in a weathered train,
the cracking erosion of red paint
snippets of our lives,
home to times wrinkles,
a memory of a passing life.

The sun starts to set in rays of
burnt orange and caramelized yellow;
a mother’s call is carried by the wind.
We all climb back into the
paneled station wagon and leave.
Many see nothing but a train,
a myriad of images
with emotion stuck on them
and if you chose to ride your life for
someone else, you pass your own.