Steep is the water tower

Painted off-blue to match the sky

Can't ignore the train

Night walks in the valley silent

You could swear the earth just moved

Can't ignore the train

Dust to be kicked up

In the crack-faced idle sinister town

Screen door to the rail station

Devil in her, she ran alongside the wasted tracks

Hem pins darted in her calves

Can't ignore the train

One spoiled girl with the tidiest apology

Somehow wedged inside her throat

Can't ignore the train

Patience their virtue

But I never could abide by that

Dungeon life with electric light

A clean towel and a basin

Mantel figures mind their places

And laughs where they belong

Through adventure

We are not adventuresome

Rage to share with a wardrobe mirror

In a room so beige and cold

Can't ignore the train

Window days saw the children pick their street games on thirty, thirty

Thirty afternoons

Molly, the boys are

Starting in that rhyme again

Teasing more and more the second daughter

How she fell

Young locked in some folks' prison

Made to dwell

Till they're braiding her gray hair

Sitting in the wishing chair

Sitting in the wishing chair

Sitting in the wishing chair