Author's Note: “Susan’s Window: 1968” is certainly a dated piece. During my undergraduate years at UVA, I rented a room that overlooked railroad tracks as they came into Charlottesville from West Virginia coal country. They were about fifty feet away so the whole house shook at each passing. My first nights there I jerked awake every time a train passed, but after a few weeks I slept through.  Occasionally thereafter I would wake in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.  I theorized that the scheduled train was late or simply not coming.
 
 
Susan’s Window: 1968
 
​
All afternoon it rained. Periodically
we heard muffled voices and footsteps
upstairs and continually, the rain
sounded on the tin roof of the shed
and on the black trunks of the maple
and the hickory trees. The window of her room
distorts the train when it passes
and there are wine bottles on the sill
for quaintness (although I don’t
know for sure).
The buildings across the way
have a death’s head look to them,
a few people walk down the street
under umbrellas.  I hear wind chimes
from somewhere and a twill of birds.
She is still in her favorite chair
smoking the last cigarette we have
between us and neither of us is about
to walk down Elliewood Avenue to the Corner
to get any more. 
 
It’s only three o’clock, she says
as though she’s next to my ear.
Yes, I reply, it’s black.  There
is a bed of antique brass by the other window,
but the other window
is three feet from the house next door
so I continue to watch the rain
through the hazy screen
waiting for the next train
to tunnel along its dark path
towards the western mountains.
 
All afternoon it rained. It was
a Bosch-bare day only for dreams
and watching closely for a second coming
as if we could foresee one.
She said the radio didn’t work
so we took off the back plate
and fiddled with the dials, checked the tubes,   
and then we put it back together.
We sat facing each other on the bed,
she on the pillow and I at the foot,
with the radio between us.  We put it
back on the table and plugged it in,
but it didn’t work.
 
I looked out the window again, there was
nothing new, only the same telephone
pole like a crucifix against the sky.
There were the same people under black
umbrellas, same angular roofs with
chimneys.  It was no darker.
She was looking in the mirror and combing
her black hair, a train whistled
like a woodwind, but I didn’t
think it was coming our way.  Inside
the room, it was silent; she’d
finished the last cigarette
and the newspaper hadn’t come yet.
She came to kiss me, but the train                                                                                        
with its five engines tugged under the window
seventy-five cars of coal and I said
to her softly that the yellow caboose
was beautiful in the rain.
 
originally appeared in SHENANDOAH   XXIII, 4 1972