Two Trains

The bit of conversation I had with Readersguide in the comments about Symbolism According to Cliff's Notes reminded me of a Tony Hoagland poem that I enjoyed because it builds up and then shoots down a couple of symbolic meanings:

Two Trains

Then there was that song called "Two Trains Running,"
a Mississippi blues they play on late-night radio,
that program after midnight called FM in the AM,
--well, I always thought it was about trains.

Then somebody told me it was about what a man and woman do
under the covers of their bed, moving back and forth
like slow pistons in a shiny black locomotive,
the rods and valves trying to stay coordinated

long enough that they will "get to the station"
at the same time. And one of the trains
goes out of sight into the mountain tunnel,
but when they break back into the light

the other train has somehow pulled ahead,
the two trains running like that, side by side,
first one and then the other, with the fierce white
bursts of smoke puffing from their stacks,
into a sky so sharp and blue you want to die.

So then for a long time I thought the song was about sex.

But then Mack told me that all train songs
are really about Jesus, about how the second train
is shadowing the first, so He walks in your footsteps
and He watches you from behind, He is running with you,

He is your brakeman and your engineer,
your coolant and your coal,
and He will catch you when you fall,
and when you stall He will push you through
the darkest mountain valley, up the steepest hill,

and the rough chuff chuff of His fingers on the washboard
and the harmonica woo woo is the long soul cry by which He
pulls you through the bloody tunnel of the world.
So then I thought the two trains song was a gospel song.

Then I quit my job in Santa Fe and Sharon drove
her spike heel through my heart
and I got twelve years older and Dean moved away,
and now I think the song might be about good-byes--

because we are no even in the same time zone,
or moving at the same speed, or perhaps even
headed toward the same destination--
forgodsakes, we are not even trains!

What grief it is to love some people like your own
blood, and then to see them simply disappear;
to feel time bearing us away
one boxcar at a time.

And sometimes, sitting in my chair
I can feel the absence stretching out in all directions--
like the deaf, defoliated silence
just after a train has thundered past the platform,

just before the mindless birds begin to chirp again
--and the wildflowers that grow beside the tracks
wobble wildly on their little stems,
then gradually grow still and stand

motherless and vertical in the middle of everything.

I don't approve of the idea that a song or a poem has to be "about" something besides what it actually says; I like to read literally, at least at first. The wildflower at the end can still be a wildflower--it doesn't have to be the speaker. The speaker is putting himself in the place of the flower, maybe, and feeling the same way--left behind, trying to grow a backbone.

The only thing I like about imagining a book is about something other than what it says is the possibilities it offers for playing games like the one the kids and I were playing this morning. If the book was about any period in history previous to the 20th century, we appended "IN SPACE!" (A Tale of Two Cities...IN SPACE!) and if the book was already set in space, we appended "in Victorian London" to the title (Footfall...IN VICTORIAN LONDON!)

Can you think of some good ones along those lines?