Trains

About my father, me, and my father's toy trains.

 Copyright © 2009 by Kherry McKay

 

 

 

 

Trains

My father builds train sets now
in his later years in his basement,
tokens of control and organization
he didn’t always have in his ordinary life.

A master engineer, moving his cars along
tracks, finding the yard disorganized,
incomplete, wayward.  He coughs in
exasperation, breathes in
DC-electrical fumes during the cool
hours of night, his miniature people
waving innocently, plastically.

I was a car that eventually managed
to find a different route, a detour.
He hasn't forgiven me for the switch,
for becoming my own locomotive,
whose engine left his tiny basement
in search of open track,
a new horizon, a miniature light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Take a look at more of Kherry McKay's writing in the Cafe!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[EILEEN McGUINNESS]

I used to love small model train sets when i was knee high to a grasshopper and it was a hornby set, i had it set up in our loft and spent many a happy hours with friends and cousins playing innocently.
I loved the memory attachment to this poem and it impacted on your writing

[Kherry McKay]

Thank you, Eileen. I just got your review, which you posted 16 years ago. Better late than never! Hope you're doing great wherever you are. ~KM

[Constance L. Hartwell]

Ahhh... what an outstanding analogy. I thought I knew which direction the poem was going in, then you totally switched it on me. I loved the flow. You did a wonderful job at telling a story of attachment, detachment, and indepedence. Kudos

[Judith]

Reminds me of my own dad and how, like all fathers, raise us up labourously into adults. A very good poem to dedicate to my dad- it says practically all about him and that he has done for me. Awesome.