"Landscape with a Passing Train."
Thunderclouds all day.
The gray sky dips down and narrows in softening the hills
as we approach.
This mood will change, this chill in summer,
this sadness without cause.
A train passes in the distance its passengers asleep.
I love how they escape from place to place.
The eyelids close and the mind drifts somewhere else.
You were thoughtful as a child, weren't you?
There were meadows to walk through, the thick grass
and thistles by the swamp where you hid.
Even then, you wanted the train to stop,
to see the faces still and wide awake.
For the moment not to stir as when
a deer freezes in a clearing.
Interiors would suit you best.
A still life with flowers.
The light drifting through the domestic scene.
Flowers picked so long ago the petals fade and drop.
What was the occasion for this scenery?
The specific fails as it always must.
To build a mood removed from our histories, personal and small.
Yet, this is all we have.
The insufficient color of the afternoon.
The noise of the train whistling now, so far away.
The sense of what's important having quickly
passed, in the hollow, where we seek shade beneath a tree.
The present seems a resting place and not the blur it is.
Though we'll move on, it's the walk we'll remember.
The dulling of the leaves, and not the mood
that brought us here.
The space hollowed out between the trees.
Not the storm, its cause, nor the trees themselves.