Robert M

Robert M. Simmons

from Added Entries (Poems 1991- )

Boston to Washington

I did not take

the Acela Express

from Boston to Washington

this time.

The entire fleet

had been grounded

because of a brake problem

which could not be repaired

due to a lack of spare parts.

During my last trip

on this train

I read in USA Today

that the Senate

had been doing little else

for the past six months

except filibuster

and argue about rules.

As we passed Kingston Station

I finished the paper

and for the next six hours,

while my fellow passengers

talked incessantly on their cell phones

or fiddled with their laptops,

watched a streaming panorama

of abandoned factories

with shattered windows,

empty warehouses

covered with graffiti,

squalid commuter stations

where bedraggled travelers

stood near colorful action posters

for the Eagles, Nets and Knicks,

litter strewn embankments,

broken fences,

rusted iron trestles

and seemingly endless miles

of decrepit row houses

extending down the east coast

from New Haven

to Union Station

in the city

where important decisions are made.

One sight in particular

viewed from the window

accosted me

like a cardboard cutout

in a convenience store:

three Amtrak workers

outside Penn Station,

wearing soiled muscle shirts

and yellow hard hats,

holding cigarettes,

standing on oil soaked gravel,

amidst a complex maze of tracks,

soot covered granite abutments

and battered utility boxes,

all of them grinning broadly

as our train pulled out

heading south.

Perhaps they were happy

to have jobs

not yet eliminated

by outsourcing and illegals.

This time

I drove down that Mississippi of filth

known as Route 95

and the New Jersey Turnpike

watching with wonder

as eager hoards sought refreshment

at foul, worn out rest areas

named for the likes of

Molly Pitcher, Vince Lombardi

and Walt Whitman.

Further south

I witnessed throngs

lined up at the salad bar

in a concrete and steel Petri dish

called the Chesapeake House.

Standing before the Capitol Building

notebook in hand

I thought about

what they had been doing

in this marble palace on the hill

for the last six months,

indeed, the last century,

and how they had gotten away with it.

Taking care of business in the Nation's Capital

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Subjects: poems about, train travel, Acela Express, Amtrak, Route 95, New Jersey Turnpike, urban decay, public apathy, government responsibility, poetry, poems

Boston to Washington