Where Trains Go to Die

Where do trains go when their days are through,

their engines quiet, their tracks askew?

Do they sleep in fields where grasses climb,

their bodies lost to rust and time?

Perhaps they rest in a shadowed yard,

their journeys distant and their edges scarred and their whistles silenced and their wheels at peace, their endless motion finding release.

Maybe abandoned depots that are overgrown,

where vines reclaim what was once their own.

A resting place for iron and steam, lost in the haze of a bygone dream.

Or do they dream of the rails they once knew,

of the days they roared beneath skies of blue?

Do they fade to dust in the earth’s embrace,

or linger unseen in a hidden place?

A grave of steel beneath the sky—

this my friends, is where the trains go to die.