The Train
Each is a piece, a small part
of a composite that has come
together in a morning,
the frayed strands of dreams
knitted into a waking timed now
to a slow tread on a familiar street.
Then suddenly, careering through
the center of my thoughts a train
comes with bells at a crossing
clanging loudly and wheels grinding
on rails heading off towards
a distant point in the past. I stop
and see myself, late teens,
leaving home, riding the interstate
with dreams spilling out
of a duffle bag, head in a cloud
of hope. I was Rimbaud on rails,
high on poetry that I took straight.
Six months in a one room flat
I ran out of money and a literary career,
hitchhiked back home to sink
into a wintery despair.
A lifetime has passed
and I have left a poem tied
to the end of each year as if
marking my way. The words
of most have now weathered away
to a silence. I write as a form
of prayer to that greater silence
and on still mornings, hear
the sound of a train in the far
distance growing quieter.
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