We’re all down here on a long, long train
To be taken for a ride,
As the signs flash past each year, we gasp
At the changing countryside,
Each mile is a passing minute, and
Each year is a passing mile,
The further we get from the starting point
The more that it seems worthwhile.

Each coach is numbered a different year
It depends when we got on,
Each coach was first hooked on at the back
But then it will move along,
The train gets longer with every mile
As we slowly move to the front,
And nothing can stop this railway ride
He gave as his covenant.

We know there’s a tunnel coming up
It’s somewhere around the bend,
We left our names at the starting point
There’s a headstone at the end.
I drop my poems along the track
For the ones that are far behind,
In hopes that they might remember me
As a man who was simply kind.

My children are twenty coaches back
My parents further ahead,
They’ve both gone into the tunnel now
Past a light that’s showing red.
That tunnel’s ahead for all of us
As each coach will end its ride,
But isn’t it going to be glorious
When we pass out the other side?

David Lewis Paget