Category: Poems

If there is one thing worse about Railroads than their soot and smoke and infernal noise I’m personally hating
It’s the time I spend at the crossings each year just waiting.
Railroad men seem to be in a class by themselves, contented and sublime,
In that they always seem to have plenty of everyone else’s time.
If anyone knows, will he kindly tell me what would be the traincrew’s loss
If they stopped just short of a crossing sometime instead of with only the engine across?
Or why, after they finally cut a train,
And squat there for a half-hour with it cut, they suddenly couple it up and lie across the crossing another ten minutes before moving again?
O how I intensely dislike the smiling hog-jowled engineer parked like an executive on his big fat choo-choo,
Who smiles benignly down in utter complacence at your frenzy, and the rag that you chew.
Of course, some people can be philosophical at blocked crossings while they sit
And work cross-word puzzles, read the latest novel, or crochet or knit;
But I am such a boiling mass of indignation
That I resemble contentment as much as a 4-alarm super-conflagration.
Yes, we could take it up with the Railroads themselves, but it might take years,
As the engineers would blame the firemen, and the firemen would blame the switchmen, and the switchmen would blame the
brakemen, who would blame the tower operators, who would blame the 14th Vice-president, who would blame the 13th Vice-president, and so on up through 12 more Vice-presidents
until #1 would blame the President who would only
blame the engineers!
All of which would be to start a circle quite vicious
Wherein all the participants might throw brake-clubs, draw-bars, hot-boxes, or just dishes.
It would certainly be a nauseatingly sad thing if all these employees broke each other’s heads and backs,
For that would leave the trains crew-less, and we could all cross the tracks!
Unless, of course, these boys would, as per their usual habit, park their trains on the crossings before starting their horrible din–
Demonstrating thereby that no matter how good a thing looks on the surface you simply cannot win!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Later, though, vengeance was sweet indeed, as one day the train failed to show up that always stops me on my way to work;
And I subsequently found out the engineer had had to wait at a crossing between HIS house and the roundhouse–pardon me
while I smirk!!

by Ray Romine Sunday, September 3, 1944