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.