Observations Upon Missing My Train
The cries of the gulls
All my life
Missed my train
I am given this time
The smile of the woman
Who noticed
The cries of the gulls
Family
In another language
All my life
The young tough boys
I am given this time
The final release of
Inevitability
The cries of the gulls
Missed my train
The scratch
On the young man’s forehead
The aimless walk
All my life
The cries of the gulls
The lottery ticket
They don’t know
What this train is
Missed mine
I am given this time
The empty plastic
Whiskey bottle
The Danish woman who
Asks what train this is
All my life
The dangerous graffiti
The dirt
The colorful falling leaves
Endless steel frames
Missed my train
All my life
The cries of the gulls
There is an ocean
I am given this time
All my life
Missed my train
I was there on time. There should have been plenty of time. But I knew as I sat at the trolley stop for fifteen minutes, I was off that morning. Something not quite in balance. Usually I can walk down the hill as the trolley pulls up. It is a knack I have - kind of a talent.
The trolley came with no apology for tardiness, the conductor merely nodding at my pass as though nothing were wrong. At 6:18am I knew chances were slim of making the connection, but I would try. And if I didn’t make it, that was okay. But no, I would make my connection, punch my clock, earn my pay.
At 6:26am we pulled into Copley Station. I left it in the hands of the Universe whether I would make the train. I would not run, since my knees do not like it, but walked briskly, straight past Starbucks, into the station, down the escalator to the platform ... just as my train pulled away.
There must be a reason, I thought. Everything for a reason.
I set out in search of a reason. I now had plenty of time since the next train was at 7:45am. Outside, the air was fresh under the overcast sky, as gulls wheeled overhead. Their cries brought back childhood memories of unwilling solitude and the gulls that cried far out over the water, their appeals echoing through my emptiness.
Touched by the memory so deep, I became more present in the moment. I realized that everything around me was unique and temporal, something only for now. I began to record my thoughts as a reporter on the now, and the poem above resulted.
There were the gulls, the young man with the scratch on his forehead that brought me my coffee, the perhaps Pakistani family on the train platform, the young woman with the Nordic accent who asked me which way the trains go, and the woman who noticed me notice her and smiled without eye contact.
Sometimes I feel that is a metaphor for my life: Life smiles without eye contact as she passes.
Maybe she’d let me buy her a cup of coffee sometime. Maybe she could tell me a story that I could remember.
