Little Grandpa Train Ride

Little Grandpa Train Ride

Not quite Casey Jones

my little grandpa (to distinguish

from grandma’s father big grandpa)

early engineered the Baltimore & Ohio

steam engines passing behind our Painesville house

he often took me on rides sat me

in the high steel seat near him

the Iron Horse throwing

a ribbony white steam scarf behind

I gazed at vibrating dials handles

wooden water towers landscapes whizzing to sides

as he reached into stacked woodpile

behind open cab feeding the eating red furnace

choo chooing me through childhood

ride over carried home in sooty arms

he always hung his striped railroad cap

on a hook at the back screen door

later retired from tracks continuing

at the new Diamond Alkali

synthetic rayon plant until

toxic smoke took his lungs

he sat in the windowed verandah

of the old Owego Street house filling

brown pipes mostly silent

until a buzzing grandkid would ask

about railroads the correct password

he talked repetitively of a single memory

of his own hard-of-hearing engineer father

cut in half by a silent engine

lantern-walking the centre of a railyard track

officials woke his mother at three am

to take her out to the cut body

my little grandpa hearing

everything from beneath his cover

this worn story coupled directly

to the great skipping-record nightmare

he was plagued with for years until he died

the big nigger with the axe, Joey

as he said chasing him down the night

after senility had severed

his mind little grandpa sat in his neglected garden

small kids flitting around him

like landscapes little laughing hands like wind

knocking off the long-faded striped cap

sitting in wonder in his seat watching

with smoky eyes his great-grandchildren

now choo chooing him off.

Joe Dolce