The Train to ElseWhere

When I was a small child , my father mouthed the the titillating old adage..if you take a shovel, and start digging for china, you will eventually surface there. The idea was captivating to my 7 year old imagination....

Unfortunately he did not point me in the right direction

because

I keep surfacing, gopher like, in my own private Afghanistan.

I anticipate the beauty of the old crumbling wall, per chance to walk hands held balancing with somebody.

Instead, I repeatedly resurface in a world of warlords, veiled women, the uncompromising religious orders that attempt to box in chaos.

At night, I told a local friend, I hear trains. Always, the ghostly rumblings, the arrivals and departures.

Always and forever just out of reach.. Like I have been standing with a crumpled tear stained schedule to SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Silly, he said, There have been no trains here in over half a century.
But I hear them, I say..I hear them in the distance.

Surely there is a train somewhere for me, and it is called the train for those who cannot read the damn schedules,

and I am in the dimly shadowed company of the many on it.

I am tired of missed trains. I have exhausted myself with the shovel.

Afghanistan is becoming too familiar in its banal violence.

beneath the hard exoskeleton of my hermit shell, beats a red red heart.

I show it to the few who have bothered to look beneath.

Take my shovel gently from me, stroke my hair,whisper to me

that China is here, now, and I need look no furthur.

In giving a place to be, I am freed to love myself, you, the world.

To do what I came here to do..love, be loved,and dance in the joy which is my anthem to the world unleashed.

It is lonely to be travel the hiways of turbulance unleashed.

I seek a container, in which this small storm that is I can be the sun rising and setting on my face, in Your eyes for me, in my eyes for you, for the world.

I don't seek to dominate. I seek simply to be.

Sans china. On the wall. The endless hemorrhage for us both/ imperfectly contained.

I ask little. Only to share, only to not be met with Doors, but Rooftops.

from which I can watch you sing, come up the fighter that you are,

an eagle to my dove, Morning giving way to Morning.

so this makes no sense..

I have thrown away the crumpled deception of schedules, the pointless shoveling.

Last night, I still heard the trains and still woke to your voice.
Talking calmly to me as if for eons.

This morning I spoke back.

I am coming, I said.