I'll miss the day we were crawling down main-street at 4 a.m
after we slept in the guest house and danced to CCR.
Tossing our beer cans in the neighbor's trash,
and singing with every molecule of our bodies
at the passing train
that deafened us from 20 feet away.
We ran wild beneath the overpass,
climbing the engines lying dormant on the tracks,
pretending we could fuel them up
ride across the nation in a rusted box car
write our names between the colors of illegible graffiti
and shout against the wind as we rolled through the hills.
And what a shame we didn't chase that passing train the way we could have.
What a shame we didn't let it carry us away
with nothing but our flannel jackets
and cut off shorts,
the lighter in my pocket,
and the thirst for a nice adventure.
We sauntered back to the diner,
exhausted by the scenery and faces,
our buzzes vanishing to the neon signs
of bars, seven bars on one street,
and the smell of coffee
as the elderly hobbled in with the morning paper
clutched between arthritic fingers.
Tomorrow, and everyday after,
a train will pass through town at 4:45 a.m.
and I can hop on the caboose any day I desire.
Each birthday slithers by,
flicking it's tongue in my direction,
tasting my youth.
And I glance again at the disintegrating old man
sitting alone in the window booth
wearing the face of a jailed old bird
with clipped wings and the grievous expression
of an ***** gent.
He would pass one day,
leaving a dusty, crumbling shanty to his children,
a box of crinkled newspaper clippings full of obituaries,
and an empty seat in the booth by the window,
where someday I will collapse in the a.m.
take my coffee black
and cut my husband's name from the paper,
wishing I was on that train
shedding this loose blotchy skin
for the rough hands I had
the day I chased the engine to the edge of town
and regretted the moment
that I turned around
and came home.