"TRAIN STATION"
copyright 2006 by TOM ROMERO
The Crossing
A poem by Paul Alan Fahey
Why am I always the third one?
The third son down from Vater,
on his right at the dinner table.
Peter and Christina,
my older siblings,
on either side of him.
Third place on the Gymnasium swim team.
The third car on the train from Stuttgart.
Standing here now in the third line.
The first two lines get a towel,
a bar of soap.
The third one goes another way.
I have heard rumors.
The boy in front tells me we will be sent
to the officers' quarters
for their own deviant pleasures.
I don't want that.
Please, someone help me!
Wait. The man holding a towel in the second line is looking at me.
He wants to switch places. His eyes tell me this.
His fingers make a crisscross.
Yes. I nod my head.
We will wait until they are distracted.
Look!
A man is trying to escape.
Two camp guards run after him.
The others with guard dogs follow.
Now. I move swiftly.
We meet in the middle.
Our arms brush against each other.
He holds out the soap and towel as we pass.
I grab what he offers.
We are safe now.
He is in the third line.
I am in the second.
What ever happens,
one thing I know.
At least I will be clean.
Previously published in Thema, Summer 2002
(nominated for the 2002 Pushcart Prize Anthology).
Copyright 2006 by Paul Alan Fahey
Paul writes:
I've always had a strong interest in WWII and the plight of the European Jews, and given my history, I think it makes some sort of sense. I'll read anything about this period or watch any movie made during or about this more "honorable" war. My favorite book is Herman Wouk's The Winds of War, and it's not much of a stretch to discover why.
My grandpa was born in 1900 New York to a German opera singer who immediately took him back to Germany. They lived in Oberriexingen, a small village near Stuttgart, with her family until Grandpa was about seven years old. I have a photo, given to me by his relatives during a visit I made in 1980; it shows Grandpa leaning over the side of a ship bound for America, wearing a suit and fedora and waving at people on the dock. I always thought he looked very mature for seven.
During my 1980 visit to Oberriexingen in my mid-thirties, I saw the church where Grandpa was christened, the house he lived in with his mother and her parents, and the monument in the square inscribed with the names of the town's youth killed in the two world wars. Since I was ten, I'd corresponded with a cousin who lived in Oberriexigen, and in my high school German and her high school English, I learned much about what Grandpa's family had endured during those wartime years. Later, as a community college instructor, I worked with a colleague whose parents were the sole survivors of their families at Auschwitz. I think these conflicting experiences and emotions informed the writing of The Crossing.
Paul Alan Fahey is a learning disabilities specialist at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California. He is the editor of Mindprints, A Literary Journal. Paul can be reached via email at: pafahey@hancockcollege.edu.
