Three Poems by Carolyn Muchhala

We Wait for the Train to Pass

First the keening,
then dissonance of metals clashing—

the night train trails
the blade of light
slashing the shadowed hills.

Pliant reeds incline their paling heads,
a silent lamentation for our lives
illumined by its passing.

The Month of Mars, 2024

There is no balance
to the season.  Uneasiness
prevails, as if we rest
in a wildly rocking boat.
A sudden downpour cuts off vision.
Thunder. Lightning. Panic.

Then green flames light
the spaces between branches
and geese announce their journey,
combing through mare’s tails
as if they alone exist in weathered sky.

Scraps of  thought
rise, swirl, settle—ads
for expiring ideas.  A clock pushes
seconds into hours.  Decades sink
under sand.  Wind sweeps the streets
with military precision.  We balance
on the cusp.

Small Planes

They come in singly in fifteen- 
or thirty-minute intervals,

come in low over the lake
and mirrored in its ripples.

They barely skim the trees, 
and I, standing on the shoulder

of Miller Trunk Road, imagine 
the air, stirred by their propellers,

stirring in turn, my hair. 
Beneath the clouds, free 

of their bodies’ weight, 
they had tumbled and twisted

in gleaming formations.  I watch, 
grounded, but soaring all the same, 

how they come in, touch 
down with soft hiccoughs, 

form a clumsy line along the grass,
accepting, with awkward grace, 

earth’s pull that I, 
not born for sky, cannot.