In Nashville just before dawn the not-so far off train
Whistles while it works, while i lie in bed
and wonder as many likely do: why does it sound again
and again, every morning, in this way? What is ahead
that it tries to warn? Perhaps a deer or moose
who daily mistakes its call for a mate long gone
from the one time the conductor, in the caboose,
forgot to call to remind the engineer on the phone,
By joking, "Dinah, won't you blow your horn?"
And the result was a sad loss of wildlife.
Straying from a field of summer corn
just long enough to get crossed out in strife
in the single headlight, frozen for all time.
My thoughts break at the alarm's chime.
