Here on this train as we ride the night
A poem about a mysterious journey
I wrote this poem in response to a prompt on
’s brainchild-site,, where she’s been using lines from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay as weekly invitations to start new work. I got the first line of this poem by turning a line of Millay’s inside out.1 I got the meter from Millay, as well; it insisted on staying, and I wasn’t going to argue.NIGHT TRAIN 2025
So here’s a train pulled in by night,
its engine fogged with the steam of day,
its wheels agleam in the moon’s dim light.
My ticket surrendered, there’s no delay —
I clamber aboard and find my berth,
and watch as the station pulls away
and stars fill my window. And where on earth
am I travelling to? It was not I
who bought that ticket, some journey’s worth,
from the station-master, it was not I
who plotted this trip down a silver track
all under the dim and moon-dark sky.
But the wheels are rolling, I can’t turn back;
my berth is warm and the stars are bright,
and I’m off, adrift, but there’s nothing I lack,
and something in me is taking flight
here on this train as we ride the night.I had the privilege and adventure of living in western Europe for a couple of years in my early twenties, and I fell in love with train travel. Even beyond the absolute brilliance of a non-car connection between one city or town and nearly any other, I loved the earthbound, communal intimacy of it, the routines and amenities, the rhythms. One of my tenderest memories from those years is the last leg of a long, unhappy journey, when a night train carried me back to the town where I was living; being able to lie down after hours weary and upright, falling asleep to the soft clack of the train’s wheels, rocked by the sway of the carriage.
The journey in this poem … is not that one. The speaker in the poem isn’t going home — or is she? She seems to have no idea where she’s going, to be a tad bemused to find herself traveling at all. She’s not anxious, though; she doesn’t understand this journey, not yet, but she’s entering into it as an adventure. That’s surely a metaphor for … something. For what, do you think? I didn’t start the journey of this poem with a metaphor in mind (I hardly ever do), but did one follow me onto the train? Tell me if catch a glimpse of it —through the window, maybe, or passing in the corridor.
Inside out? Well, the line from Millay’s poem was “And there isn’t a train goes by all day,” which for some reason struck me as unbearably sad, so I kept the train at the center and played Opposite Day with nearly every other word in the line.
I love the dreaminess and the rhythm of it. And the repeated "it was not I". There's perhaps a hint of something a little wistful about the poem, like it can't quite shake off the echoes of the melancholy of Millay's line, even while it reaches towards hope and an unknowable future.
Loved your metaphors!
You mentioned that this was the last leg of a long, unhappy journey.
Your poem speaks volumes about what you might have been thinking, and you looked at the window filled with stars.
I was also in Europe in my 20s. The year would’ve been about 1976.
I have no memory of writing a train at night, but I do remember delightful trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, which eventually lead us to Stonehenge.
Beautifully written, Elizabeth!