Long Ride in the Dark

*




I won’t say I didn’t look, down the slow train that pulled me,

or that at each stop I didn’t watch the doors for your entrance.

I was a child, and children don’t believe in death or mercy,

and absence doesn’t harm belief, as much as circumstance.



So I, without flowers, watched  vanishing town by town

And I, without hope, was certainly not disappointed.

There were others, asleep where they had fallen down,

I dreamed of a sword in a stone, of the hidden anointed.



And did I, cry out? Not once, as I had not learned to expect.

They moaned sweet curses in their sleep, the passengers nearby

As if they had found the same pain, and this was the affect.

And what could I do but carry this, or close my own eyes?


I don’t recall the stepping down, just the station the lights, the frames.

I watched the doors slide so many times, and you never came.

                
                             -Brent Allard