Stranger In The Grove Poem by grace mariner

Memories ramble across the tracks of my mind.
Certain touches,
words,
kisses.
Your image seems to move further away from my internal vision
as you enter my thoughts.
But those touches,
those words,
those kisses,
remain as close as you ever were.
I talk to you each night.
Sometimes I scream at you as my mourning turns to anger.
I pray that you hear the echo of my words, that you hear what I need you to share with me.
The train ambles through my coal studded heart...
it is my bloodline.
When you crashed into me, you stayed for a moment in time,
surveying the damage.
It has gone and, like you, its image grows dimmer.
That rumbling I've known since childhood comes now with an
increasing frequency.
That lone cry mimics my own.
Again, I pray you hear its wail.
I wish my loss of you would fade as your image does.
But that train keeps them ever close, that rumbling thunder and that wailed warning.
I crave and fear the immensity of it.
It appears as a ghost train, carrying shadows and spirits of other lives lived.
It passes.
Rumbling, shaking, rattling.
It is in these moments that I see you, standing in front of those slender trees in that unknown grove.
You face me but seem to be fading, moving without movement like some preternatural being.
You are like those trees...
tall, slender but with decaying roots.
The sun cannot reach them to sustain them.
I could not reach you to sustain you.
They are the first to fall when the storms come.
So much like you...
stoic, silent, damaged.
So with each day you sink more into that decaying wood, knowing you were too close.
And what you have left behind grows stronger, more intense, more apparent, and indeed, harder to bear.
And that train, ambling through, carrying ghosts of my blood, always makes me pause,
remembering lost words,
lost touches,
lost kisses,
lost love.
And the echo of that rhythm splits my heart again in two.
I watch as it passes, still seeing you against that wood,
fading as the echo, and the rumbling move further away from me,
just as you do.