Hear the Whistle Blow

If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone,
You will hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.

Maybe it’s my background of learning and teaching folksongs, among them old songs about the railroad, but trains and the sounds they make in a distance intrigue me. From my bedroom I can hear the local trains coming and going and whistling through the crossings as they rumble on their way.

For a year I have felt like I am sitting on my luggage on a platform waiting for the train to come. I have sat through rain, wind, snow, cold, darkness of night and the aloneness out there by myself.

Now on a spring morning, I think I hear the whistle of a train in the distance. I am ready to embark on a new journey. Where the train will take me I do not know, nor who will be on the train with me, but finally I sense my days of waiting on the platform are coming to an end.