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I feel the rhythm of the train
rumbling through my veins,
tempo taking over
until my heart beats in time.

Each of us sit silent at our windows
as the morning light streams
through the dirt-streaked panes;
witnesses to the changing world
but separated by steel and glass.

Push and rattle through the towering high-rises
of growing cities, unable to see the top
through our narrow viewports;
past rows of identical houses and
into vast open fields of wheat and cotton;
empty mills and abandoned factories
whose broken windows and crumbling bricks
sigh with hopelessness.

Witness the scattered trash and debris
beneath concrete bridges;
see the earth rising up,
conquerer of fear and despair,
vines and grasses reclaiming vacant buildings,
budding young trees discarding shingles
as they yearn for the sun.

Together we witness, weary travelers,
melding our perceptions and ideas of the world
with the realities we see beyond the glass;
letting the gray and green seep into
our own reflections
as the sun reveals the echoes of our faces
imposed upon the landscape.