Poem: Feeling the Train

You wait for the train. No one else is at the station.
You wonder that there is a station here at all,
here in the hinterlands, where almost no one lives
and almost no one leaves.

Yours is a strange discontent, a restlessness
just when things seem to be at their best,
a need, no matter the beauty of now
to see what might lie beyond the next bend.

Your mother scolded you for it, sure
something was not quite right, sure
it must be a sign of dissatisfaction.
Your father encouraged it, making up perhaps
for his own restless nature.

It has nothing to do with dissatisfaction.
Simply an awareness that there is always more
to see. Travel is never a discarding.
Never a leaving behind, but
an adding too.
Addition, not subtraction,

You feel the train arriving before you hear it.
A low rumble under your feet.
You feel your heartbeat rise. Ready.
More than ready, but glad too
that tracks that leave, come home again.
A zero-sum game, with scenery.