Looking Out of the Train Window Makes Me Think

of campfires of swamp treks of hide and seek, of tree forts, and hidden spots under bushes where one could look out and see and not be seen, of pine smells and barn smells and the romance of homestead houses made of sod, of weeding of shovels of hoes and trowels, of the chill of evening of the way chaff sticks to the sweat on one's arms, of dusk and the mystery, the fear of the unknown that tramps and crackles in the woods, ogre, father, stranger, of feeding deer of feeding geese, of cows, of cowbells, of the goats on Boblo island and how you could buy a handful of pellets to feed them for a quarter, of a dead calf thrown on a pile of trash out behind the barn, of stepping softly on a trail paved with sawdust, or bark, of the train engineer blinded by the snowball some bad boy threw at the train as it crossed Church Street in January, that was the schoolyard legend, of being in the backseat, the radio is on, the car is blue, a train crosses forever in front of you ahead and the red lights (they look like robot eyes) blink and blink, of orchards, of cherry trees, of tent caterpillars and their little crunching mouths, of backlots, of old man bars, of can after can after can of lukewarm beer, of small town museums of general stores of penny candy of maple sugar candy in the shape of a maple leaf, of a night time high school football game, of red barns of shady highways, of unloading boxes from the truck at the back dock of the store, of crickets or grasshoppers of jam jar insect zoos, of magnifying glasses and the focused light burning sticks, of setting ants on fire, the intense miniature torches powered by the sun, of the smell of bacon, of monarch butterfly caterpillars, of milkweed plants, of the white sap of milkweeds, of the fresh smell of twisted handfuls of dry grass, of feeding grass to the horses (the quiet terror of their yellow teeth) of waiting rooms, of machinery that fails, of the fear of a bombing, of throwing a rock into a small pond, of bullfrogs, of new toads, their bodies smaller than the first joint of your thumb, of wolf spiders, of bonsai trees, how you thought you might grow one in a coffee can, of foxes, of a raccoon, of the novel Rascal and the scene where the whipporwills called over the field just after dusk, of my sister who is gone, who is gone by her own hand, of guns, of desperation, of the train, how it pulls me forward and i do not resist and do not know if resistance is something to desire.