Joshua Ryan Wood

Notes on Transience

Yesterday I saw the train pass beneath the 10th street bridge

beside the shadowland homesteads and the tin can hearth.

The steamroll of industry humming along beside

the fraternity of waiting. They wait for it to pass,

for something to pass,

time, trains, the water just passes and passes down the river,

the people they pass on their way, lost and found,

everything goes beside the aqueduct shadows where the hopeful

souls hide, waiting.

and I wondered,

whom does the train hold? Where are the coal-dust pirates

and the silent mutineers of the freight car vessels?

Maybe one day they’ll find a home,

Like an arrow striking the forest floor

empty handed and broken

                 relieved.

Or maybe home is the clack of the car, the thrill of discovery,

the musty dank of the cargo train revelry,

the joy of the constant destination.

Joshua Ryan Wood believes in art as an expression of the nature of the True Artist who made the world, and hopes his life will echo the nature of the Creator which loves to rebuild and redeem broken things. The most important things to him are his relationship with Jesus Christ, his wife, his family and friends, his two dogs, nature in general, and a great Imperial Stout, in that order.