There’s a train in the distance

A soothing sound from this far away

Somehow it puts me in a state of reminiscence

Though it’s 3:30, I decide to get up and start my day

I pour some coffee, turn on the space heater, sit at my desk with my feet raised

I open my laptop and scroll through a list of names

Death never stops, like a runaway train

I read the stories

How can 101 years or even just 16 be condensed to a paragraph

The train chimes

I think about my own epitaph

35 years has gone by like a roaring train

Holding my high school days, my youthful ambitions, all my friends

Warm Atlantic waves, silly superstitions, and little wins

Gone – like a fire consuming my prized possessions

There’s too many to read

The breath of all humanity

All these people were just like me

Do they leave a trail

In all the years and striving

Or is it all to no avail

Like smoke from a locomotive

These people are me

I try to think about others

I work hard, I crunch the numbers

There’s that “oooooo” again in the distance

At 4 am I’m up, thinking about resistance

I’ve heard a country singer warn people to look out for that long dark train

It skirts around me for now

I look at history, I read the Bible, I try to figure it out

But it is elusive

Is that train racking up bodies

Death has got to be an injustice, robbery

Somehow all the stories are inconclusive

That train sounds again

I sit and listen

Drink my coffee, read the eulogies

Some people die on their birthday

What cruelty

It’s my first-grade best friend’s birthday today

I’m thinking something I won’t say

That train runs in the distance on its track

At what point, I wonder, will it circle back

My coffee is almost gone

I’m awake before dawn

The New Testament on my desk tells a story

About the endpoint of that murderous train

It compels me to get up

To live right, to have faith

For there is something to gain