The Night Trains

The freight trains at night
Haul a different load
Than that carried by day.

Following moon silvered tracks
Over a landscape of gloom
They shriek around the bay.

I hear them in my sleep,
In dim hours before dawn,
And my dreams trail down those tracks -

Behind engines stoked by men
With shadows in places where faces should be
And angry flames licking their backs.

An old one, previously unpublished, as we say in the Poetry Business. Hearing the trains hooting and wailing in the distant dark as I walked home this evening brought it to mind.

Now, I bring it to yours.