The Invisible Sign

A Train Called History

Life erupts as untilled soil,
with learning eyes
that gather the now,
hitched to the car ahead,
soon to become
part of the past.

Time—
constant and unyielding
on the rails of eternity,
a fragile string of lives
so finite—minuscule,
lost amid an endless
tethered line.

Shallow vessels
carried along with
no awareness of those
who came before,
or those
who follow,
unwittingly led…

Into a past
soon to be forgotten.

Whether by Adam and Eve
or a puddle of goo,
the future follows the past,
and the past
hastens on,
so quickly its lessons
lost.

The now is brief, insipid,
a vapid mist,
carried away,
nothing learned,
forever repeated,
a train called history

_{-James Eichenlaub 2025}