Train Dreams
why the chicken can't eat only eggs.

Before you try to drive the thing,
be a passenger.
🚉
Sit with your forehead on the cool glass,
let other people’s sentences
rattle through your bones
the way the tracks hum under the car.
🚉
Every writer you love
was once just a kid
dog-earring pages on the late train,
mouth moving on the quiet parts,
letting somebody else’s story
beat their own heart for a while.
🚉
The line only runs
as long as the seats stay full.
A lonely route gets cut from the schedule,Before you try to drive the thing,
be a passenger.
🚉
Sit with your forehead on the cool glass,
let other people’s sentences
rattle through your bones
the way the tracks hum under the car.
🚉
Every writer you love
was once just a kid
dog-earring pages on the late train,
mouth moving on the quiet parts,
letting somebody else’s story
beat their own heart for a while.
🚉
The line only runs
as long as the seats stay full.
A lonely route gets cut from the schedule,
rust creeps into the switches,
the last engine sighs into a siding
and never comes back.
🚉
If you want to be a herald of the craft,
start as its loudest fan.
Buy the ticket.
Ride every weather, every season.
Let ten borrowed words
walk through your head
for every one you send out into the dark.
🚉
Call it practice.
Call it respect.
Call it how you keep the line alive
so when your own small train
finally rounds the bend—
lights on, brakes soft-whistling— ✨
there’s still a station lit up,
people waiting,
in no hurry to arrive.
About the Creator
Richard Patrick Gage
I'm an author and publisher of poem anthology group from northern Ontario, I like enabling other voices and new writers. I'm also a novel writer, known for the indie darling Noetic Gravity that came out in June 2025. Here I write for me.

Comments (1)
I never got to ride on a “real train” (like Amtrak). LOL. But everything you described is what I did on a subway train. Red line: Maryland to D.C. for 8 years. I was never in a hurry to get to work.