he holds the phone
so we can hear the train
Many thanks to Julie Schwerin and the other editors for including this haiku in the December 2024 issue of The Heron’s Nest. Volume XXVI, Number 4.
This haiku was written for our youngest son Michael who told us once when he was a boy that he wished he had been born earlier in the 20th century (he was born in 1998) because he wanted to be a hobo and ride the rails. He was 6 when The Polar Express movie came out and his favorite character was the hobo on the train.
Michael has always been interested in travel. When he was a boy he found a list of National Geographic’s best travel books of all time and he latched on to Richard Halliburton who wrote The Royal Road to Romance in 1925. I think he read all of Halliburton’s books. He talked about him so much that I ended up doing a library program on him. Michael has done several long hikes including the Appalachian Trail, Colorado Trail, and the Camino de Santiago. And he loves to take long road trips, stopping at museums, historical sites, and roadside diners.
The “first apartment” in the haiku was actually a room that he stayed in while doing a volunteer stint at Stanton Home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a residential and day program for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. His older brother Daniel lives in Massachusetts and helped him find the position through a friend. Michael was there for three months helping out with maintenance and groundskeeping.
After he arrived and settled in, he called us and as we were talking, the train went by and, just like the haiku says, he held the phone so we could hear the train. He grew up hearing a distant train that passes not too far from our house. A train at night is a lonely sound, but also kind of comforting when you're safe and warm in your own bed. Being out in the world on your own is also kind of lonely. Maybe the sound of the train helped remind him of the adventures that lay ahead in a new place. And maybe the sound of the train also reminded him of home.
