Last train to dawn

Last train caught in extremis on the eve of dusk –

Shards of sun sweeping the entire sky –

There was no other way but to take it –

None other – sadly – as if this meant

Admission of failure – a dark spot on

A blank map – a sentinel watching

Over the one and only remaining road.

The dead of night blanketing that

Neon-lit carriage in which the occasional

Sleep-seeker opens a vague eyelid –

Not quite comprehending the world

Beyond the Securit glass – the necessary glass –

Full of discarded unpunched tickets –

Darkness prevailing and but spawning effortlessly –

Listlessly – the Nobel Prizes of the everyday.

Blind tracks whitenoising the mind –

Irascible or morose ghosts electrifying the angst –

Drilling holes the size of planets

In the carapace of conviction –

All that is needed is a sharp bend

And a high propensity to unbelief.

Ours should be an epoch of security –

Fear dripping from every theory –

Exponential questioning as truth seems –

Seems – to come suddenly into view –

Liminality claimed only in the vision –

Only in the broad, full sunlight –

In sleeplessness – in blindness –

In the bumpy train uncoiling to dawn –

Expecting to be transgressed –

Otherwise mandatory and indomitable.

The last train slithering through obscurity –

A sudden sharp apex of noise in motion –

Breaking the apt void – the unfounded

Expanse of stringed ropes oscillating

The whole space between here –

And there – between the now and the next –

Between the dark backs of the planets –

Yet the silent train is leaving the night,

Moving restlessly and inevitably until

The very last of the dawnbreaking light particles

Exposes the world spreading at our feet.