ARTHUR NAHILL // Two Poems

Another Train Song

though not for the A train 
nor the peace train
nor the Marrakesh Express

Not for the streamlined
ones pulling out precisely
at midnight
from darkened stations
deserted but for the occasional
ex-lover with a guitar 
and harmonica

but one instead
for the six-thirty-seven 
local to Topeka
and the forgotten freight
carrying coal and plastic
furniture to the coast.

Here’s to the seven-fifty-three
out of Newark 
and those leaving
unceremoniously every hour
down the steel spokes of cities

the ones filled 
with indebted commuters
ham sandwiches and warm thermoses
sloshing in our bags, newspapers 
neatly folded 
on our laps.

Here’s to our blues
the ones that don’t so much rise 
to the frenzied heights
of whiskey-soaked vocals
and saxophone solos

as settle unnoticed
into the background
like white noise

that rhythmic rocking
that lulls us nearly
to sleep.


This Wind

All it lacks is a memorable name
like the Santa Ana
or the Williwaw which blows
off the central mountains of Alaska

this anonymous wind 
that keeps arriving
from unknown distances
to blow open repeatedly
my front door (its loose latch
something else in my life
I’d intended to fix)

as though merely to annoy
or to instruct me again
that the urgency of the world
cannot be ignored

this banger of shutters
toppler of rubbish tins
interrupter of poems
as I sit among a litter
of unfinished ones
cluttering my desk

some of which managed
to flare for only a line
or two before extinguishing
like damp tinder in a cyclone

others staggering
with the clumsy rhythms
of young girls in their first heels
leaning into a fabled nor-easter
their laughter gusting 
away behind them.

---

Art Nahill is a physician/writer currently living in New Zealand. He has published work in Poetry, Harvard Review, and Poetry NZ, among others. A full-length collection of his poems, A Long Commute Home, is forthcoming in February, both in print and electronic formats.