Winter trains part 3

There might have been a sense of community in the broad atrial waiting area of the station, but it was quickly drowned out by the survival instinct that emerged among comfortable people who are slightly alarmed. Lines formed quickly at the handful of fast-food/coffee places and people scarfed pizza with wary eyes trained on their neighbors, eating as a dog does: quickly and too efficiently to relish the alimentation. Sulking overcoated patrons trudged everywhere to and fro or circled shark-like for the remaining seats on the benches. Smart ones read to stave off impending madness, with ever-more erudite reading fodder glimpsed around every corner.

I was reading Tony Judt with two different frowns. Alternately I displayed my public-transit-has-forsaken-me-never-will-I-see-home-again grimace, and then my furrowed-brow-because-Tony-Judt-is-postulating-a-complex-political-idea-in-clear-and-readable-prose-and-I-am-striving-to-understand frown. I have discussed with my significant other that I ought to stop frowning when trying to understand something or flesh out a thought because the expression is frightening at close range. Maybe I'm often puzzled. I do feel the need to manifest what's going on in my head to the world at large. I furrow my rather prominent but nonetheless brow and try to work out a sentence that might express what I'm thinking.

word for word

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is the 7:30 pm train to Lowell, making the following stops in West Medford, Wedgemere, Winchester Center, Anderson, Wilmington, North Billerica, and Lowell. This is the train to Lowell; if you didn't hear it, we don't go there, and it's still not too late to get off."

Scattered

So I've come to have a preternatural calm about me in bad situations. I can make things better if I can be calmer than anyone else. The calm can be easily mistaken by others for acumen or intelligence. Really it's just a defense mechanism. Stay calm, we can build off of calm. I didn't panic today when the snow interfered with my plans. I pursued the matter to the fullest extent that I could, then pulled back, made a strategic decision to go to the movies, that was that. Allow the calm to fill you. You can't change anything by your madness and rat-like scurrying.

Something in the way of explanation, belated

A plowed field with little puddles in the furrows that overtop their banks, reminders of the deluge a week past. Like a memory of it but not the real thing. Sad in their way of reminding us of what's gone and can't come back.

An older man walking down a concrete path to his car in the company lot. Weathered blue jacket and work pants, he drives home to an empty house, falls asleep alone to wake tomorrow and go to work again.

The way the light falls on the train approaching sunset, slightly dulled yellow-orange, passes over it and makes shadows on the other side.

Empty streets in the dusk where no one goes. Open doors left open unattended and broken windows uncared for.

The open expanse of the harbor at Lynn, blue-black and soulless, looks like it goes on forever.

These things I saw from my window. They were sad, but didn't sadden me.

Mediocre poetry, part who knows of many

Lines in the sand,

Lines for the T

Heavy screeches on the tracks between here and points west:

Newton Lower Falls, Coolidge Corner.

Where are you tonight?

Do you sleep?

Do you dream of Waban, Woodland, Maverick?

I am in all of them,

Waiting for your train to arrive

looking for you