I first fell in love with trains as a teen
babysitting second cousins. While they slept,

I closed my eyes, let the train serve as soundtrack
for scenes fabricated with a boy at school.

Twenty years my first husband and I shared
a home close to tracks, woke to echoes of great

weights slammed, clatter of boxcars, cross signal
clang, haunting horn that hangs like a noose.

Years after he died, I moved in with you,
two blocks from a train trestle.

Weekends we talked late into night
as train after train rattled windows,

pulsed our spooned bodies. Now,
you’re gone too, and I’m further away

from a train, but at night in bed,
everything shuttered, or morning stretches

in silence, winter or early spring
before leaves permeate the air,

the dreamy, faraway whistle reaches me,
propels a starry time-lapse memory.