Tag: Trains

Cowcatcher Persona

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 6 Comments

The Word of the Day over at Merriam-Webster is an old-fashioned one I haven’t heard for years. A COWCATCHER is an inclined frame on the front of a railroad locomotive for throwing obstacles off the track. Since cows no longer wander about freely, I suppose locomotive makers no longer see the need of adding one.

Just for fun I decided to re-purpose this word for our day and created this verse:

Your words hurt,
I try to explain.
I feel the sting;
see the pain in their faces.
But his cowcatcher persona
tosses my words to the winds
and plows on.

Not Alone

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 2 Comments

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning:  CANDLE
The Word of the Day Challenge:  BABBLE

And my response will be this little verse:

Not Alone

Up before the sun
peering into the night
and feeling all alone.
But no—a light! A train
chugs up the track,
its lively wheels a-babble;
its sweeping beam proclaims
another soul’s awake
to share the morning stars.

He’ll see my candle
as he rumbles by
and know life stirs
in this little house.
The engineer and I
will give a passing nod,
sharing our bits of light,
almost like a hug
in this lonely world.

Swallowed by Fog

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 3 Comments

We’ve been enjoying milder weather this past week, which has given us heavy fogs at night. We woke up this morning to a thick fog whiting out everything outside our yard. I thought I heard a train pass in the night, which gave me this verse — I believe this is called a tanka:

oh fog, how could you
swallow a whole freight train
in your opacity?
only the whistle escapes
to squeal on you