At the Train Station – The Worcester Journal

by Sam Hark

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Railway Track In The Early Morning Mist / encyclopaedia britannica imagequest

Sam Hark

Goddamnit. It’s now 6 past 7. Trains like dirty tin-can caterpillars

slog inandout of this hollow cocoon of South Street Station.

In front of me a raw flurry of existence flutters by, all glory & madness.

Above me, the footsteps of rain begin their fevered dance, jittering free upon

a slant glass ceiling. Beside me, Sully sits furrowed, lost between the soggy

flaps of an outdated TV Guide (seemingly the last one in existence).

Which (most likely) prompted the existential query that caused his

eyes to bloom like the dusty wings of a moth as he prodded:

if ya could, wouldja’ wanna even know the time of your death?

& on the usual day, one unlike the one I am describing to you here, I would

respond without breath. For I would live out my pre-counted days as the glut King of

Certainty, swilling my red wine from the grandest of goblets like it was rainwater, lazing

upon my gilded throne, gazing with pity upon peasants toiling in muddied fields of

mortality beneath my golden heel. I would tick through this prescription of time as the

sure-sighted surgeon of ephemerality, the true scourge of all obscurity.

But as I previously stated (please see above), this day was unlike the

others that stack higher than an infinite pile of unused TV Guides.

On this day, as the rainwater softly fills my worn boots,

can I come to realize the distinctive grace in the wait for a train

that is all too certain to arrive.

Sam Hark studies English and Philosophy at Assumption College, Worcester, Mass. His influences are John Hodgen, Gregory Corso, Arthur Rimbaud, and Tony Hoagland.