Train Wreck

One night at Murphy’s Bar I overheard
a train man chatting up the bartender
so loudly I could make out every word.
He didn’t seem to be impressing her
so I bought him a beer. He was retired,
my daughter the same age as his twin boys.
Still blaring, he told me how he’d been hired
expressly for his love of making noise.

“You’re saying it was not the company’s
requirement that you blow the thing that loud
according to their safety policies?”
He chuckled like an urchin, even proud
of himself, and said that, working solo, nights,
“Who was to stop me, half-past-one and three-
a-m, from scaring the living daylights
out of the locals?”—which included me.

Why, who indeed, and how? I let him go,
for what else could I do? But the next time
I woke from hearing that damned whistle blow,
a voice told me that some perpetual crime
can only be stopped by a worse one. So
most every night I’m haunted by this scheme....
At dawn I come to, though, relieved to know
the perpetrated horror—is a dream.