November 2018
Penny Harter
penhart@2hweb.net
penhart@2hweb.net
In 2002, after eleven years living in Santa Fe (a mid-life leap after living most of our lives in NJ), my late husband Bill Higginson and I moved back to northern NJ to be closer to family again. Grandchildren started being born, plus we missed our kids. After Bill died in 2008, I moved again, down to the South Jersey shore area to be near my daughter and her family. I am about a forty-minute drive inland, on winding country roads, from the Atlantic Ocean.
Passing Train at Night
The face in the train window,
backlit like a saint, stares
into the dark and rushing trees,
navigates the web of tracks
across empty streets,
the hollows of your eyes.
The face in the train window
gazes up at buildings
that flicker and go out
in the wake of its passing,
and you remember riding through the night,
your forehead pressed against the glass
as the long whistle echoes from your skull
like a comet’s tail.
-previously published in my collection The Night Marsh (WordTech Editions, 2008)
The face in the train window,
backlit like a saint, stares
into the dark and rushing trees,
navigates the web of tracks
across empty streets,
the hollows of your eyes.
The face in the train window
gazes up at buildings
that flicker and go out
in the wake of its passing,
and you remember riding through the night,
your forehead pressed against the glass
as the long whistle echoes from your skull
like a comet’s tail.
-previously published in my collection The Night Marsh (WordTech Editions, 2008)
© 2018 Penny Harter
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