Highland Station:
Poems by Roland Tharp
Poetry Texas Press, Texas City, Texas. 1977

Contents

Highland Station (poem below)
Colding Nights
The Fox
Taking this Place
From the Woods
The Seiners
This Same
The House Near the Shore
Memorabilia
Texas Falls
Snowman
Leaving the Body in Winter Sun
Waiting Out the Night
Gnats
Haze
Fright Tales for an Adolescent Daughter
Last Things
The Gathering

Highland Station

The train is forever coming.
We four wait at a faded station.
I am the man who paints

us scattered by the graveled track: a bent
man with a cane; a girl without illusion.
The train is forever coming,

the light forever yellow and silent.
My mother stares, down remembered lessons.
I and the man who paints

resemble them, converging to the points
of vanishing, into generation:
the train is forever coming.

We are forever fixed, child and parent,
in these dumb, daubed postures of confession.
I am the man who paints,

puts aside his brush, stares, intent
upon the rail, its breathing almost begun:
The train is forever coming.

I wait now, certain beyond complaints.
The train is forever coming.
I am the man and the paints.