Phantom Bears

Far to the north (I don’t know where)

There is a brittle wood

Beneath a sky as grey and dull

As flesh without its blood

The air is always cool, not cold

The shadows soft, but deep

The snow has melted to the earth

But spring is still asleep

And through that wood there runs a train

As silent as the dark

It runs forever with no stops

Or chance to disembark

And this is where I found myself

(But how I do not know)

On board a train bound for nowhere

Through winter without snow

I met a man, a traveler

Who didn’t have a face

Where cheeks and lips must once have been

A mirror was in place

I tried to gaze into his soul

Through window of the eyes

But all I saw was my own face

Struck cold in wild surmise

“Where to,” said he, (I know not how)

“A-running do you go?”

Said I, “I wished to ask you, sir,

And hoping you might know,

For never have I seen this wood,

Or train that splits it through,

Nor ever yet have ever met

A fellow such as you.”

He gazed at me, and I at him

(Or so at least I thought)

Though I of course saw nothing but

My face in silver wrought

When long at last he chose to speak

I did not understand

His voice- the sough of wind through boughs

And shift of falling sand

I left him in the sleeper car

Where first our paths did cross

I left the shelter of four walls

That guard from tardy frost

I climbed up to the battlements

Of silent clanking life

Where cold of steel and bite of wind

Cut like a butter knife

And there atop the quaking beast

I found myself a perch

To watch the trees glide stately by

The cedar, spruce and birch

I sit there still in passive cold

Not quite enough to freeze

And all around the phantom bears

Are watching from the trees