Elizabeth Smither
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The young women at the station
On National Park station
outside the Station Café
three young waitresses are crying on a green seat.
A fourth, with equally-pink eyes,
has dashed inside to serve a customer
a café macchiato.
The fifth pink-eyed waitress
is on the viewing platform which will bear her
on her way to Vancouver.
Not one lives in National Park.
With international grace they’ve borne
wine and white plates to tablecloths
skirted tables in a dance that made them friends.
Now the train is here they weep together
and on the train platform one weeps back.
The world begins at the Station Café
and ends here too. The Overlander Express
is seldom on time but rails are inexorable
all the way to Banff and Basel and Berlin
to the waitresses on a green bench
who farewell one another in pink.
