Waiting For A Train...For 'M' Poem by r james sterzinger

Waiting For A Train...For 'M'

Rating: 5.0


A snowflake crushes its only
Life into the parting of your
Scalp and dies there
Making its choice gladly.

Its extremely cold, waiting for the
Train, riding from apartment to
Innercity and back.

What was the depth of your soul
What was your hope and mystery
Who sculpted your fate
Who extinguished your little girl dreams?

On the platform its cold
Early morning light ribbons
Pell-mell from street to station.
What mother conceived, what
God, time and matter formed you?

You, out of what
Image and likeness. All of it
Shrouded in deep mystery; your finest
Art. How many artists have tried to
Capture you?

What blues, What confidence
What casting of bronze
Could take you? Nothing!
Primitive, that's for sure.

My thoughts collapse and
Suffocate thinking of you
Walking the streets of gray to the
Station, with the flake of
Snow on the part of your
Hair giving up hope
Me too, gladly
Crossing myself as I cross the street.

20-21/6/08

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
R James Sterzinger 21 June 2008

My most recent poem: Waiting for a Train (for M) is actually based on a story told to me by a girl who use to catch trains in the city of Moscow. When I composed it I was also reading at the time Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, and listening to Tchaikovsky. The poem has two settings: the loneliness of the moment and the sullen beauty of the protagonist; and the author who is trying to understand the depths of her and what makes her tick. The last lines portray his loneliness, in not understanding this muse as well as his spiritual malaise, as he himself crosses the street and in doing so crosses himself. Being that this poem is set in Russia, when can only assume that he too is a Russian Orthodox, but as the poem surmises, a fallen one who puts more luck into a sign of the cross, rather than faith, for his faith questions God. 'M' for whom the poem is for is actually a pseudonym based on three people. One is Kay Morrison, a muse of Robert Frost, and the other 'M' is a muse of the spiritual writer Thomas Merton, or maybe it stands just for a muse, in whom, like Hamlet said of Ophelia, , 'Be all my sins remembered.' rjs

0 0 Reply
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Close
Error Success