Vision of the Future Aboard an Amtrak Train
Tinted windows sepia-blur jimsonweed and
crisp crabgrass clawing through pavement,
erect propane tanks and corn silos, the silty
gray mouth of the lolling Delaware River,
a low stack of StorageLite units, parked sedans
encroaching on a residential street like plaque
along an artery. Rays sheening a development
of beige houses are unrelenting, though kind. How
can sunlight be childhood, memory, annihilation
all at once? A lone deck of bleachers bare of
spectators next to a high school football field
tenses for the fall season when a boy will refuse
to become his father, will leave the girl alone,
will rip his pads off in the dank locker room
before rushing to the riverbank, inexplicable
and trembling. His grandmother had spoken of
water made murky by sewage and soot, blood
from the upstream slaughterhouse, slick runoff
from Gulf Oil, chemical waste from DuPont.
But the river before him is clear in fractured
moonlight; his teachers tell him striped bass,
brown trout, American shad are returning—
some bony sturgeon even rove its depths.
There was always a chance. There always is.
Ben Groner III (Nashville, TN), recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination and Texas A&M University’s 2014 Gordone Award for undergraduate poetry, has work published in Rust + Moth, Cheat River Review, Whale Road Review, Stirring, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. He’s also a former bookseller at Parnassus Books. You can see more of his work at bengroner.com/creative-writing/