Near Smiths Falls

An ode to an Eastern Ontario winter
By Lucianne Poole

The train plows through fresh snow.

Like a cloud of icing sugar, it blows past my window.

Pine boughs dusted white,

And bare maples blur against the blue sky.

The train rattles along the icy track.

Cows look up from across a fence.

They've seen it all before.





Having said I've written few poems, I keep digging them up on scraps of paper. This has proven useful because as I'm reading my old stories, I'm realizing they need work - alot of it! - before I foist them upon you. 

I wrote this short prose poem one cold February on a Via Rail train between Ottawa and Toronto. It's a striking route, particularly in winter, that takes you across frozen fields and forests and through picturesque towns like Smiths Falls, Ontario. And, of course, past blasé livestock.