Train Journey – New York to Montreal

Yonkers -
Kawasaki factory
Recycling centre with an ad on it:
Don’t Trade it – Donate it – www.donateyourcar.com
Mighty scale of the Hudson

Croton-Harmon -
Nothing to see

Poughkeepsie –
Frazzled Dutch tourists
Mountain streams
Mining country

Rheincliffe -
The station gives nothing away
Occasionally on the far bank a palatial building which could be a rich man’s fancy or a prison

Hudson -
Chartered in 1785 (“Rediscover historic…”)
Rolling red corrugated iron canopy
The river finally starts to narrow
Pollen adrift like a snow flurry

Albany -
Invited out to breathe the air
Which is warm but riverfresh
Crossing the Hudson – like a frontier town out in the boondocks.
First skyscraper since NY

Schenectady -
Gold dome on a blue sky
Land looses shape shorn of the river

Saratoga -
Climbing into the hills
Forests to get lost in
Willowy streams
Girl in a black dress with red shoes walks across the tracks to alight

Fort Edward -
The woman eating sunflower seeds next to me has gone

Whitehall -
Mid afternoon
A train that trundles through land so green you could eat it
A gothic hammerhouse looms above the town

Ticonderoga -
On a stretch of water freckled with water lilies, stretching like an after dinner belt which gives to Sunday pleasure seekers cruising silently between wilderness shores

Port Henry -
Sliver of cultivated New England
Champlain as wide as the Hudson
Red brick station house

Westport, Essex County –
Alpine Americana
Meadowland, grazing cows, red roofs
The train left the river behind, tiring of snaking at walking pace between cliff and water

Plattsburgh –
1st sign of Canada – a Canadian National flatbed trailer
7 and a half hrs later, tiredness gains ground

Rouses Point –
Flat plain. Big sky. Clean cut edge of the US of A

Approaching Montreal –
The Belgian plains of Canada
1 hour late
Beauracracy
Dutch clouds
Ten hours
The whistle sounds and the clouds gather


15.06