In the poem “Station” by Eamon Grennan the train symbolizes the end of the journey that a father takes with his son. A father and his son are at a train station waiting for a train, and “silently the huge train waits,” to take away a father’s son, not only to his mother’s home, but also to the next stage of his life. The train is “crowding the station with aftermath and longing” because these are the final moments the father has with his son. The father sees the looming departure of the train that ends their life together with dread, for the boy is about to “leave one home for another; one parent for another.” His heart is “aching in vain for the words to make sense of [their] life together.” Furthermore, he is regretful of “all [they’ve] never said to one another.” He is searching for the right words to say to his son before he moves on, and “wants to tell him he is entering the light of the world’’ but is too taken by the darkness of the moment. He is pained because the train will soon pull away and mark the end of their current relationship as parent and child, and “they both know it will never be the same again.” This is because, the boy is now approaching adulthood, indicated when the father can feel his “faint fuzz” as their cheeks touch. He is about to leave his father for his mother’s home, but it is implied that this may be the last visit between them as parent and child, for the train is taking him to his “next life.” The
