Late-night Train February o8, 2o18

We lost the horns of the many freight and passenger trains that used to sound through our little town all hours of the night and day. Against the law to blow those beautiful, triple horn warning devises within the boundaries of Norman-town. The city councilman who pushed the bill through said it was a quality of life issue. Hmm. My life isn't better because the trains no longer sing their traveling song. My ears miss that dark haunting blare of the trains at night, the sturdy balance between a scream and a moan that the triple horn provided. There's no quality to silence. There is only silence.

Late-night Train

The last late-night train just rolled
through Norman-town.
No one noticed except me and
the black Labrador next door.

But that's the way it is.

Get use to a thing,
the sounds of trains, the bitter cry
of its triple horn, the rattle, rattle, rattle
of freight cars shifting back and forth,
the grinding of steel wheels
against unforgiving metal tracks.

When it’s gone, that reverberation

of commerce gone, just gone,

the world feels thinner, becomes

a shadow buried deep
within an even darker shadow

with no possibility of light to come.

There are those moments

that weariness one feels
when you stare too long
at the toothpaste stains
on the bathroom mirror,

when the pothole of existence

spreads out across the bathroom tiles
(so long and black it is) and you forget
that you were once a human thing.
Woodie o2-o4-18