Parallel Lines
Trains come and go:
long clattering chains
that disappear in silence
where the rails meet.
I watch them reach out
and touch the horizon;
converging in the distant
unreachable future.
I have watched others, moving
off into the distance, become
smaller and smaller until,
they finally passed
over the horizon and out of sight.
We will all meet, then,
in that place
beyond the final curve of earth.
So I begin again
to live in shared uncertainty;
I ride this train toward you.
Strobe of morning sun
shines through passing trees.
I am still, the world moves by.
Speeding wheels complain
Against the rail.
-John Benedict
