Sometimes I Cry on the PATH Train

 

                                                            By Dave Nash

Between Harrison and Journal Square when writing my fiction becomes non

and I look upon brown marshes patched with frozen puddles,

refracting a sullen February sun

gives way to diesel rigs,

corrugated containers,

half-finished landfills

repurposed for renewables.

 

I’m spared when we go under the cut bedrock and new people get on

who couldn’t have seen the tear,

the slow drip.

 

I’ve sucked it back like a proud pouchy man posing for his picture.

 

Finally underground for good

I can breathe again knowing

I kept it together for another morning.

Whatever it was will stay buried

until I come out from under.

 

The slight touch of strangers sharing

this ride breaks that train

of memory that

plunged me into this abyss.

 

Without the kindness of crowds,

alone in my car I would bawl to my job

where if I just work as hard and

cross my fingers just right

I will live the same life for another year until my contract comes up

and I’m renewed in the same old.

 

But it’s another distraction from the real things.

The things that I wake up thinking about.

The things behind the things that

make me cry between Harrison and Journal Square.

About the author:

Dave Nash writes on Northeast Regional trains. He is the Nonfiction Editor at Five South Magazine. His work appears in places like South Florida Poetry Journal, Bulb Culture Collective, Jake, and The Hooghly Review. You can follow him @davenashlit1.