The passage of life
As a train upon the summer grasses
That sway to the wind’s content
Whichever way they shall blow
And tickle the fancy of boyhood dreams
The folly of endless days
That knew sunset way too soon
“We had endless etcetera in railroading”
Quipped Morgan
Yet there is little here
That resembles the very long ago
But a train is still a train
Loosed across a soul
Where they have lived forever
To seek them out with wonder
About a vast land
Through valley
And o’er plain not pressed
Between the leaves of childhood memories
They roll
To capture them
At the end of my own footsteps
In the pastoral
In the dramatic
We live fully
In that precise moment
As the shutter clicks
So beats the heart
A composition of simplicity
Rendered from the soul
A visage cast en memoria
To gather light and shadow
In the form of mystery
Content with questions unanswered
And rivets uncounted
It is of unknown origins
A destined manifest
Of odds and ends
And boards and batten
Of sundries and staples
And baubles and beads
Shuttered behind graffitied faces
Sprayed upon unkempt flanks
The glory
In film sheets and glass plates
Filled with the glitter and glamour of things we never knew
Now faded and yellow in the acid of time
But OH!
How they beckoned and would not leave
To capture a soul
And rapture it for eternity
Here
Refracted through the prism of chance
The summers of youth
Are but distant memory
They were heady
With sight
And sound
And innocence
Of places to go
Mile-wide smiles
And dreams too big
To live them all
Yet all too soon
The days faded into night
And the gray
Of forgotten yesterdays
But trains still roll
Upon the summer grasses
That sway gentle
And swish about the cuff of our jeans
Or perhaps across a perfect winter sky
The winds aloft
Casting ice crystals about
In random glory
With the sun near day’s end
Shadows harsh across the sage
A chill wind tugs at a collar
And whispers December
Fate sends a fast train
To rumble through a soul
And cry out through the high and wide
Nary an echo heard
Alas
The day is short
The hour late
And follow we cannot
It is only ours
To stand in the moment
And watch slip past
As all the yesterdays have
Knowing the end will come
A last distant trumpet
Dying gentle
Fading, fading
Leaving only the wind
A memory
And a smile
---RAM
Rick Malo©2025
Thank you!