Clickety click! as out of town
The engine picks her way;
Where barefoot children, sunburnt brown,
In dusty alleys play.
All the summer early and late,
And in the summer drear,
A maiden stands at the orchard gate,
And waves at the engineer.
(excerpt from "Clickety Clack," Cy Warman)
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop--docile and omnipotent--
At its own stable door.
("The Railway Train," Emily Dickinson)
Trains are a part of our daily routine. They greet us at the same hour in the morning and they remind us when its time for story books and bed. Not a day goes by that we don't hear those whistles coming from the train tracks near our home. For these two siblings, life couldn't get better.
