The Train

This poem was written within a span of 2 days while commuting to and from work. Isn't it amazing how the immersion in a seemingly ordinary real life experience can spawn creative beads of verse that blend to give life to a pretty acceptable poem?
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Drab gray train snaking thru derelict tenements
And brownstone buildings shedding ancient blocks
As would a snake renews and molts.
Slithering tracks, polished by
Wheels' intense embrace,
Union of inanimate with dynamic
One bound to the Earth's bosom
Sacrifice -- to propel the other's
Dreams to race like the wind.

Drab gray train nourished
By electricity it draws hungrily.
Does motion now make it seem
Like a silver god warping through
The space-time continuum?
Leave the desperate reality
To a blur - relegate to oblivion.
In its obscurity the world
Seems a better place to be.

Wood and steel - by man's ingenuity
Create a universal microcosm
Of dynamic state reflecting life's
Subtle details and nuances.
Within the train's womb
A carriage of humanity suspended
In a time frame propelled to their
Appointed futures, distant destinies
And, perhaps, different realities.

Telephone poles in steadfast sentry
Shepherding a hurtling mass of steel and flesh.
Imprisoned within a track of complacency
With no freedom but that designated
By the morass of rails and gates.
Diminish a mighty god-like hunk
To a state of pathetic mediocrity . . .
A slave to its own awesome velocity
Confined in a vicious circle of servitude.

Steel frames, granite tenements
Tower mightily upon this miracle
Of dynamic pseudo-life that shakes
Their foundations as it punishes its tracks.
In its grand entrance to the sea of life
That populate the floors above -
Tremble and shake, grind and wheeze
Breezing above the cacophony of snarled traffic below
In its wake the bestial inhuman rusty engine growls.

Drab gray train stirring the placid night
With eddies of mournful yearnings
From a thousand metal wheels, axles, and bolts,
Grease and oil and soot in infernal heat;
Consigned to either an eternal marriage
With the unfeeling metallic surfaces or -
Expulsion to the freedoms of the embrace
Of a patiently waiting ozone
That ultimately suffers man's senseless follies.

Drab gray train traversing a lonely stretch
Of tracks that extend to infinity.
From a present vantage prepare
Join the union of the Sky,
The Earth and Man's mechanical offspring
Where all will consequently join in harmony --
Manifest proof of an omnipresent singularity.
And from afar the drab gray train now a pinpoint
Ceases to be, but a part of the Whole.