Hope

There comes a quiet passage

of time on a train,

it arrives about 4 a.m.,

the sky lit like ash,

when the night journey is

halfway through and

halfway begun.

Every dark station and spreading tree

passed by assumes

a fleeting fragility

and stillness.

I dreamed last night

I nearly died and then

awoke today, at the

end of the line,

to rain and

faintly heard birds.

It’s hard to have hope

in such a dark room

where light merely filters in;

barely, haphazardly.

This is my moment,

and I am 5 years old again.