Buying a Ticket: Winter
“You won’t like where this is going,” he said.
“And where is it going?”
“Forward.”
“And why wouldn’t I like that?”
“Because you’re always looking behind you.”
Looking out the Window: Spring
“The clouds are moving.”
“And changing, and shifting.”
“And darkening, I think. Can such grand and mighty things fall?”
“Not without the voice of God.”
“God’s voice was not in the thunder.”
“All Aboard!” thundered the conductor.
In the Valley: Summer
“What nameless men sweated and died laying these tracks for men they could never name?”
“For us, you mean?”
“For us, themselves, for a paycheck, or for a life. One must live.”
“One must die.”
And what can be said thereafter? There is silence.
The Place I Was Before: Fall
“No more looking back,” I said.
My companion on this long trip glowered.
“East and West,” I said, “continue into each other. I have returned home, my North, and all from here is tragedy.”
“Then why did you leave?”
I shrugged, thinking of all the terrible misfortune which accounted for my life, the terror and tears of childhood, the heartbreak of youth, the long, lonely labor of adulthood, and thrust my hands into my all too empty pockets.
“To come back home.”
Tale Told 