POETRY ON MEDIUM

Last Train Home

Year’s end blows a despairing wind …

Time, warped in the white winds of winter the early hours of the day extending on into forever like pearly light rays on the blanketed plains

Midday eventually rolls through bell tolling for those working to lunch gleaming metal thermoses prepared in the dark of morn letting out gasping puffs as aromatic soups and leftover stews are supped on for sustenance huddled over for warmth crackers crunching behind chapped lips

Shadows start racing tasks hurriedly paced through at breakneck speeds snow falling as flakes pile up a living second-hand for the visual time clock flying as the race to his final evening punch last of the year begins still no satisfaction

Bells toll in the distance as he choicelessly trudges through snow, knee-deep after watching it, dance about all day long laying around while he worked himself to the dry old bones left ground down and weak

The situation starts to feel like the cozy, tucked in ground is taunting him on his long way home

Inviting him to give a go at the piles of fluffy freshly fallen snow how tough can all this puffy stuff even be?

Screaming to the heavens in exhaustion and delirious inferiority missiles launched his box for lunch the book he carries but never gets a chance to read

Stomping both feet in a raging display only causes further painful delay the patch of black ice beneath deep obscuring snow catches his bruised heels down he goes back flat on the pavement head saved by some treacherous snow

Tears starting to flow burning skin as they start to freeze what sort of day what sort of entity “don’t you know I’m your enemy why, Oh why did you take me out, while simultaneously saving me?” fists pounding the ground in impotent strikes retaliatory

To the casual onlooker he is breaking down throwing punches in the swirling snow

Looking out through flurrying white dissolved only endless seeping black constantly attacking he’s merely fighting back

Waiting now, for the last train home

K.B. Silver

This December photo prompt struck me with a melancholy tone. It may be partially because I have been listening to a collection on spotify called Beethoven Winter Vibes,

I feel it lends itself to the darker tones of winter—less toward the cheerful, festive ones.

This piece goes through the last day of the year with someone who has been having a tough day, or maybe even a rough year altogether. It watches things get more and more difficult until this person is just spinning out, waiting for their missed train, the last one there will be for the night.

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