he stood on the platform--the rails
beginning to reflect the sun's first orange light,
burning fog off the woods, slowly

only that morning, he'd read
of a man out west who threw himself
in front of an oncoming train

he heard his own westbound
locomotive; he continued to watch the tracks
painted longer by a rising sun

he loved sunrise, though sunset,
of late, pleased him more, for he knew
they were finite, for all creatures

he suspected the man
who met the roaring diesel head on
had done his own counting

his own reckoning sunsets were limited…
but he wondered if the man knew that very beast
he met, though one of many, was called,
"The Sunset Limited"