Georgia Station 1943

This summer night so softly calls, beckoning hearts to stay one more, as coyly baited anticipation pulls her past the station’s doors. Upon the platform, stalled in silence, the blue rails disappear through trees that hold this summer’s boundary, that hold this town where loved was pleased. For here life slowed its errant rush and dreams suspended moment’s splendor within the kiss of true love’s blush and all that truest arms can render. Slow and pointed, every kiss, so softly laid in Georgia’s moon, eternal, every moment’s claim, yet still this summer passed too soon, when through the southern pine the call, the orders came and he was gone. Stemmed along these rails of chance, their lives, their hopes, in whispers long.

In full moon’s fire the clouds broke bright in iron blue and angel white. The scent of pine and clay’s red rust held her captive as it must. A long low calling whistle echoes o’er some distant hill, shuddering her stoic courage, flirting with her iron will.

The platform mostly empty now, her one lone bag next to her side. Gabardine in blue and pressed, the rose he gave her tucked inside the fold at hat’s fine piping, that as she stood there still, its fragrance mixed in Georgia pine, stirred by full moon’s hope and will.

And so with time, as time does bend, her fleeting moment’s grasp did rend an echo along the steel railed tracks, that in each passing second stacked each moment spent, each sleepy kiss, each spark from every ember’s bliss, to well a tear divine.

The steam in angry spurts and spouts softened hard the whistle’s scream, as pounding out eternal hopes and stretching long arrival’s dream. The quiet night escaped the scene in unfamiliar porter’s rush, yet… from steeping recollection’s blur, one steam bound sigh reduced to, “hush!… feel the Georgia moon pull strong upon this liquid steel and night, blue in hopes and promise, red in love and blessed in white… hush!”

As she stepped aboard the sighing angel’s bluing heat, she heard her true love’s whisper, faint, “hold my kiss upon your lips until again we meet”…

Slowly left in silence, the platform stark in summer’s moon, as distance dims the pullman’s lantern, this summer’s bliss returns to June.