John Labovitz (johnl@meer.net) is the force behind the best and most extensive list of literary lists and web pages on the internet. His list forms the basis (apparently) of all other lists, as best I can tell, and is necessary, or at least awfully helpful, in getting these lists the attention they deserve (or think they deserve). He's also a recent migrant to Seattle where he discovers that, by gawd, it really does rain all the time.


Living on the Railroads

If I lived here, in the lonely old railroad
yards, I'd plant lettuce between rail ties,
tomatoes along the sidings, beans on the roofs
of switch houses, eggplants in the rusted hulks
of old cars, strawberries in the roundhouse.

If I lived here, in the stations long abandoned,
I'd invite deer into freight warehouses, skunks
into depots, snakes into mail-rooms, crows into
signal towers.

If I lived here, on the railroads left for dead,
the grades would turn to rushing streams in the
spring, fish would gather in switchbacks and side
spurs, and the railroads would live again.

[16 Sep 94, Amtrak, north of Philadelphia]



John Labovitz

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