How Do We Get Off This Train?

Photo by 7 on Unsplash

The great regret, played out in each new tomorrow, is like a high-speed train racing without tradition or tracks.  

The familiarity of steel on steel, the rhythmic rattle of clickety-clack, features found only in motion pictures from the past. 

Politicians once rode the old trains, from city to city, throwing candy as the train slowed.  Bands played, people and flags waved in the winds of honored observance.  

Today, America is divided.  

Crossroad signals that once flashed red fail, warning gates that once descended to keep us safe are judged obsolete.  

The loudest voices point fingers. 

When the train of hate arrives by satellite, web or net, everyone stays home. Algorithms and isolation fuel this train.  

Hate hurls us headlong into a future as small as a microchip.  The question that forms on everyone’s lips – 

How do we get off this train?

This poem started in Alex Dawson Messy Writers Club as a prose poem using “jumps in scale”. It has gone through many revisions, some of which, I never intended or saw coming until they landed on the page. To follow the tiny spark, in this case metal on metal, is a poet’s mandate and sometimes its magic.