Evening Train

From my open window I saw the evening train

running toward the city where it once began

and I wondered as I watched its lights

fade into the summer night,

"Where is it that they're going to?

What is it that they have to do

and how many will still be alive

when the train returns tomorrow night?"

A careless wind in passing had stirred the curtain lace

but it did not move me as it touched my face.

With my questions I stood looking on

long after the train had gone

and I guessed that the answers ride

with that train on its trip through time.

I listened to the ticking of the clock

and wondered at what is and what is not.

The tracks, they stood forsaken beneath a mist unclear

stretching toward the moment where they disappear

and they beckoned like a long-lost friend

to take me around the bend

with the night hung above my head

and all answers left unsaid

I could ride straight ahead into the black

without even thinking to look back.

In harmony a candle was burning at my side

with a wind in changing that could not decide.

I was turning as it flickered by.

Strange reflections caught my eye

and staring at a window glass

I could see myself at last

cast in shadows cold and dim,

standing outside and looking in.

As quick as I saw it, the mirror turned around

and the wind decided to blow my candle out.

In the darkness where a poem is

written on the evening mist

was a rhyme that I couldn't catch

so I simply lit a match

and waited for the evening train

to call me to my window again.

The rough cut video was posted on YouTube on 7/12/11 - click here to watch that video.