THE STATION 3 by Fred Ostrander

The past we chase. A train moving out. Great blasts of steam,

great wheels, gradual at first, out of the station—

glass, iron ceiling, and steam dispersing.

And a ridiculous figure who runs hopelessly, helplessly after

an untraceable past.


Those whom he loved were so briefly present. They do not look back,
      
they being of the past. As he slows, without breath,

perhaps stumbles, catches himself, and turns back slowly, reluctantly,

disbelieving, in a confusion of loss, death, memory, tricks

and falsifications of his time.

               What is they take with them?


Returning to a vacant, waiting present, the numberless clocks,

A station with all trains gone.
 

                                                                      © 2003 by Fred Ostrander

                                                                      First published in Blue Unicorn

COMMENT ON "THE STATION 3"

This is a poem on age and loss, of memories that dwindle, leaving the remembering mind bereft. As often in Ostrander, the poem is made up largely of lists. The first stanza evokes several details of a railway station (of another era), focusing finally on a running figure. In the second stanza, a list of this man’s actions—slowing, stumbling, turning back—merges into a list of psychological realities: “loss, death, memory, tricks and falsifications of his time.” This is the heart of the poem. A brief coda shows us the station empty, the attempt to reconnect to the past abandoned.

Fred Ostrander has worked in the Lawrence Hart Seminars since the 1950s. Recent publication credits include Listening Eye, Southern Poetry Review, Nimrod, Zone 3.