Ghost Train
Poem - by Lisa Timpf
There’s a provincial park in Ontario where a train used to run, years ago. Rails forgotten now, long gone, but it’s said you can hear the ghost train passing when the conditions are right, in the valley. Though I hiked the ghost train trail more than once with my dogs Sneeks and Jak, I can’t say I ever heard it.
wind through the trees—
we tread the bottom
of an ancient sea
Still, the dogs loved that path. Sneeks would often let loose a yelp of sheer delight when we arrived at the parking lot.
Years have flown by. Sneeks and Jak have passed on, and I’ve moved to a different part of the province. Still, I yearn to go back and walk that trail once more, even though I know these kinds of experiences can never be the same, because we have changed, and the trees have changed, and we carry with us all the other selves we have been in the interim.
My ears have become less sharp with time. As though to compensate, my heart hears things it was deaf to before. I’ve come to think that there is a ghost train inside all of us, and it sings longer and louder as we age, and more and more of those we once loved leave us behind, moving onto the next dimension, wherever that might be.
autumn afternoon hike—
around a bend we seek
glimpses of old ghosts
It’s hard to resist the temptation to set our feet on roads we’ve walked before, hoping to seize a piece of the past, to trick ourselves into believing those we loved are still here, or that our innocent selves are still as they once were. But isn’t that what memory is all about, binding and weaving yesterday to today, so that we might spin out toward tomorrow with hopeful hearts?
I stand on the ridge—
in the distance
a joyful woof