At dusk, I’m slowly walking
under a dark cast of hawks.
Rain is again approaching
a wash of blue-black clouds
coloring everything.
In the heavy downpour,
my thoughts
thicken with shadow
and time.
I remember a childhood dream
about a prairie railroad
at night, no one
there, the track
stretching into light-eating
horizon, a bleak dread
everywhere in a world
gone Godless.
I daily carry pricking nettles
from that dream, and I left
a part of myself
behind all those years ago.
Even walking now,
I’m falling back into
that nightmare
to again face something pure—
an elemental
fear, ancient
and ageless.
In that quiet
kingdom,
I’ll finally shed my name
and wait for the train.
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Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Scissors and Spackle, Ink Sac, Cera- sus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. He is the author of, God Said Fire, and the forthcoming, Snowfire and Home.