Lost Things You Did Not Know

Just down from the windows there is a loading dock,
offices near the tracks. A depot station perhaps,
no nonsense, brick and mortar, old metal blinds
in the windows. The door is locked
but you imagine it open, and all the goods
that came and went from the station
when the trains still ran.

There is no one here now. No one to light the windows
into the night, or open with the dawn.
Every time you pass the building ,you stop.
You can not help it, stopping, gazing, wondering,
peering in the windows, cracked just enough to see
the old desks covered in dust,
notebooks and rubber stamps. scattered,
some of them open. You can make out the columns
of figures, even if you cannot read them.

It was shut down, it seems, without much preparation.
Closed. Locked. Left, and you find yourself wondering
what happened. Why. And wondering how life changed
for others in the town when the freight, so much
a part of their life for so long, ceased. Life obviously went on
but was their mourning like lovers split apart,
ordid they simply change to using trucks
and only the loading point change?

You will never know. This is not your town
and you are never here long enough to sink
into it’s history. Everything is left to your imagination,
made strong by brick and mortar, just enough
to leave you mourning, not the first time
you have mourned for lost things you did not know.

About this poem

Regular readers and friends know I have a weakness for abandoned buildings. I have a particular weakness for old factories and commercial buildings, like the old train depot in Bellows Falls that is in the picture above.

I am not sure why, or what I mourn exactly, but I do know what it is like to be abandoned, and perhaps it is those feelings that push me to go poke around when I come on an old place like this one. A slighly deluded sense that if I take pictures and share them, the places have not quite died. Not unlike people, love and faith.

Tom