Poem: The Last Train

The train stops,
No one is at the station.
No one waits for loved ones,
or waits even to travel
and you wonder why you have stopped here,
what memory or promise
lies beyond the empty platform,
what ghosts beckon.

You are tempted to debark,
but then, you are often distracted
by possibilities and empty places.
You have a need to explore,
to let the dead past enter you
and wash through you,
sometimes a deep chill of winter,
Sometimes a warm spring sun.

Perhaps this is why your journeys take so long,
why even now in your graying years,
the destination is distant, vague
an impressionist painting more than a photograph.
Perhaps this is why you always arrive on the last train.
less concerned about points A or B,
and far too curious about the stops along the way.

About this poem

I love to travel. And if I can travel by train or car and actually see the journey, even better. Slower perhaps than airplanes, but far more fulfilling.

I have come to some places later in life than others. And that’s OK.

I like empty places, abandoned homes, barns, factories. Something about them sing to me.

And from those things, this poem,. The station in the picture is, I think, is the Trenton, NJ station, taken a couple of weeks ago.

Tom