--- N A T E   C H I N E N

a. Trenton
										
 	nothing to hold.
 	nowhere to go.
 	this is Trenton --
 
 	on the platform,
 	a father smokes
 	with his two 
 	teenage daughters, 
 	both girls trying not
 	to look impossibly young -- 
 	heavy Eagles jackets,
 	silver hoop earrings,
 	ponytails peeking through
 	matching baseball caps.
 	
 	In Trenton, Christmas 
 	has come and gone.  snow
 	sits heavy over this city -- 
 	rowhouses and water towers
 	flash by, gaunt and awkward.
 		
 	we lurch forward.
 	the tracks stretch on 
 	this way for miles.  
 
 
b. Bristol
 
 			= quiet
 
 		dull metal scraps jut
 		from the snow like scabs
 
 		a blank high school football field
 		  a penitentiary
 
 		the Grundy Industrial & 
 		Office Complex stretches
 		like Babel into the ashen sky
 
 		at the post office, 
 		an american flag hangs, 
 		tattered, from its pole
 
 		UNHAPPY WITH THAT CAR YOUR DRIVING?
 		       Go to Northeast Lincoln Mercury.			
 
 
c. Croyden
 
 	the train kicks up snowpuff and the sun emerges, cold and
 	dizzyingly bright. on the cracked wooden platform, one patient
 	woman, icecaked boots and the Zober Development Co. smokestacks
 	coughing soot that settles quiltlike over the drifts. I am trying
 	to make this a beautiful thing, the woman and her layers. She will
 	be old soon and I can't picture her nursing a child -- I can't
 	imagine that she has made love, I feel as if she has always stood
 	in that exact spot: the black soot boots, the orange coatbundle
 	hung on her frame and even this is lovely, I tell myself. 
 	In a flash, gone
 
 
d. Eddington station doesn't even have a sign.
 
 
e. Torresdale
 
 		I like the snow 
 		on the roofs 
 		of houses 
 		in Torresdale.  
 
 
f. Holmesburg

this is the last stop

before bridesburg
 


and soon philadelphia

and soon ph
 


not much changes

an area code, a few



tax laws perhaps

a school board



skyline

skyline



rowhouses and water towers
 
and: Howard County
  


wants you to have
 
a nice day
   


How different

things gain



momentum if

we only let
    




sinks into the mush

and a dozen people



climb aboard

the buried weeds



rise ever so slightly

a photographic still



life i have already

forgotten



rust seeping from 

a bridge into a frozen



river? ice gripping

the metal? (things
 


i wrote as i saw them 

at the time, months ago)



How different

this poem

 

would have been if

i had sat on the other