The Forgiven

Held captive and caged in a tin shed, an old steam train sulks in its own stillness, a relic from another age. Its skin is cold and hard and has the smell of vintage grease. The fire that once blazed in its belly has withered to a coating of black soot stuck to the bottom of a furnace box, the steamy snort from its nostrils, silenced to a dewy drip. The huge wheels that were pumped by furious pistons have come to a halt and now are welded to rails by rust. Admirers lovingly pat its iron carcass. The poisons it spewed out clogging the lungs of a generation have dissipated in memory, its breath now sweetened by a forgiving nostalgia, the veneer of a more innocent past. Somewhere, stuck on a siding, its brutish beauty still sits panting in the damp of an autumn afternoon, immune from time, absolved of guilt.