Slack Action
Jeffery Donaldson
It goes through my mind like a train at night,
the train my father rode in the night, his mind
a train of thought far from where he rode.
When I pull into the seniors' home I like to feel
the car drift in abeyance1（悬而未决） round the last corner,
another touch to come nearer, the braking slide
into parking ea百度竞价推广ents and an end. Forty|two
years he leapt among the tracks, nights, to cobble（修）
things together, shuffling2 boxcars and flat cars,
dealing3 their lengths part way into sidings || join
and hinge（铰链，枢纽）, muster4 and release || climbing the ladders
free of his uncouplings. It took some sorting out.
He listened hard for the word come down
from the Dispatcher. Too heavy now for the staff,
he has to wait for the machine that will hoist5 him,
strapped6, over to his chair or back to bed again.
A sandbag, his sullen7 mass slumps8 into the lift
and rises sloppy9 and unresisting. He goes with it
staring in disbelief. I am borne here. For us,
mother and wife are let go, the love|ties
grappled loose in unbroken entanglements,
our new solitudes10 gathering11 and fanning out.
When the sliding door whispers open for me
|| in hand his double|double and an apple fritter,
unlooked|forward|to, like a pill that you take ||
I enter with purpose but am halfway12 off again.
Our family is convergence and pergence13（收敛与发散） both.
I have a photograph of him in mind, a man
in his prime leaning out from the boxcar's ladder,
signalling ahead the slow recessions, the gaps
and clearances14, the thrown switches and coupler
knuckles ... ten feet and closing, five feet, good.
His grief looks poor on him. Plan was he'd be
the first to go || with drinks and smokes, half by
his own wishing || and Mum's years would ease
ahead of him by whole decades. But after
Alzheimer's and a kidney ache, her body still shining
with something fifty about it went off and left him
cajoling his clogged15 arteries16 past eighty and beyond.
We never spoke17 of this, but I always imagined
those seemingly endless trains he as百度竞价推广bled
in the night, a hundred cars and counting,
how, when the engine pulls up a little
and the cars buckle18 forward in succession
but have not yet sTOPped before the hogger19 guns it,
it must be that all the fastenings along
let up in turn and spread fresh gaps throughout.
Cars and clusters of cars at once go
clutching and unclutching down their length.
And I try to picture how, the jolting21 instress
unravelling, their reciprocal momentums
would meet and intermingle, the forward push
backing into slows, and the slows pulling off
pulling forward ahead of their kickbacks22 and jostles,
and you would hear the whole thing down the line
at once parting and gathering, the entire train
getting on, undecided. But how too, if you really
listened for it, there would be single cars hidden
in the midst, scudding23 alone, neither pushed
nor pulled, left gentled into hiatus（裂缝）, coasting free
an instant in the long line's accordion24 folds'
uneasy breathing. A hovering25 out of waiting,
the glide26 getting on in the inertia27（惯性，惰性）, itself still moving.
He comes to with a jolt20. I take in my stride
his pantomimed 'Look who it is!' and we embrace,
our private journeys sallying up behind us
in opposite directions, gently coupling. Not
a greeting or farewell, but a staying that is
neither between us. He keeps me close, and not
to come undone28, I tell him what I've been
thinking about the train. 'Slack action, it's called,'
he says, and lets his arms fall open around me.
