The Girl at the Side of the Road

Hair straight and brown,

slight childhood body

stood at the window 

waiting 

for the train to appear, 

its forlorn whistle announcing 

the beginning of the show. 

Rumbling the earth, 

it chugged past, 

always in too much of a hurry. 

They couldn’t see me wave 

from my bedroom window ~ 

the engineer, 

the man in the caboose 

and all the passengers. 

On days when 

I stood on the sidewalk 

they would all wave back, 

maybe not the passengers 

busy reading their books or 

visiting with their friends.

Few trains carry passengers anymore

but I knew one day,

I would be on a train to hear 

the whistle from the inside and 

wave at the girl at the side of the road.

“A train will bring you back to the place you came from, 

but it will not return you home.”

~ Jedediah Berry, writer