A Trip to Boston

I feign sleep, peak at you resting against window
watch as you take in lives and images we pass by
on this train, in this car, whose windows are but a
viewer for a slideshow of America.

We glide on tracks past gleaming center cities, urban
decay, suburban wastelands into the Weehawken Shaft
tunnel under the Hudson into Penn where the crew and
accents change. Out under the East River into the arms of
Lindenthal’s Hell Gate Bridge above Wards Island where the
ghosts of Native Americans, mental patients swoon above
the trees.

The train drops into the land of Queens stops in New
Rochelle, barrels past Larchmont and Kilmer’s Elm, begin
to journey along the Sound of Long Island, view thousands
of ships, boats in harbors rocking amidst white caps like the
Lexington and Constitution before them.

We pass mansions and shacks, abandoned rail yards, depots
travel north through meadowlands notice shells cracked open
on ballast, gulls flying above. Stop in New London, to the east
the Cross Sound Ferry heads out into the fog. Small picturesque
towns fill our window.

Soon we are in Providence, the home of Olneyville Weiners
Roger Williams, the train pulls, an hour to Boston. We arrive
in the cave that is South Station, detrain, catch a cab, and take in
the sights of this rebellious city. Follow the entrenched roots of
history into the harbor where liberty still brews.

That night we travel Longfellow’s Bridge into Cambridge. Meet old
and young poets reading at Out of the Blue, a Stone Soup mix, we
take in the words, share our own. Look forward to the next morning
when we will travel southbound, take in the sights of America as we
pass by.

 

Photography © Chad Parenteau

Photography © Chad Parenteau

 

g emil reutter lives and writes in the Fox Chase neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pa. Nine collections of his poetry and fiction have been published. From the Valley – Poems will be released in 2016.

Chad Parenteau is Associate Editor of Oddball Magazine. The photo above shows the old Out of The Blue Art Gallery location, which hosted Stone Soup Poetry for over a decade before moving to its current location on Massachusetts Ave on Central Square Cambridge.