I Think of Ohio
I
think of Ohio, and the trains at night,
So long ago.
The long, dark, hollow call
Of other times.
The murmur of strangers carried
Onward in the dark,
Like me,
Into the nowhere of a dream.
My mind turns back. Was it really
Simpler, then?
The strangeness of that mournful cry,
remembered,
Is like a sigh, the letting go
Of worlds,
An exhalation of the soul.
Oh, will I
Hear that traveler again
Before the dagger of the day?—Alan Soffin,
Doylestown, Pennsylvania, whose interests
are philosophy, religion, filmmaking,
writing, classical, jazz, rock, and
international music. This poem is among
the sudden memories of an elderly person
before whom float the faces of people too
wonderful to have gone. Ohio has to do
with several of them.
|
