Across The Sea Poem by Andrew Rainford

Your incandescent train snakes its way through the trees,
A company taking its final journey to your appointed place,
So ethereal and pearlescent,
Most beautiful of all children in this world.

To you the old world seems now gray and hale,
Careworn from the burdens of many lives of men,
Through love and war and tears unnumbered,
And now come the fading years.

Sleep now, and dream of your forebears,
For they call to you from a distant land,
And here at the shores of the immeasurable sea,
The longing shall awake in you.

The smell of the salt air and taste on tongue,
The wail of the white gulls in the ears,
At the havens a tall ship is resting,
To carry you hence by the old straight way.

Westward from mortal lands,
Beyond enchanted and shimmering lands,
Until at last a lone island hoves into view,
And the first fingers of a far green country.

There you will dwell in peace everlasting,
At the feet of the powers of old,
And be reunited with those who you thought lost,
No longer exiled and absolved of grief.

And verily it shall be,
A place on Earth where ancient beauty yet abides,
A shadow of the designs of origin,
A memory of what might have been had not evil been sown.

And so you take leave as I sit upon the sand,
I can never follow upon this path,
And though we know each other not,
My heart weighs heavily within me for it.

Twilight has befallen the living world,
It’s great loss will mourned by few,
Uncomprehending and wilfully dismissive,
The end I fear shall come all too soon.

“To love and lose is best, they say,
Yet this is far from child’s play,
The pain I feel chokes off my breath
And shall from now until my death.”