Poetry Contest Entry

The Night Watchman

~By Alice Ellen Hook

A portal to blindness,
The tunnel shadows even light.
Not a ray allowed to enter,
And therefore, neither sight.
The masoned walls and ceiling
Reflect each tiny sound.
The wet, bricked amplifier
Keeps the tracks below the ground.
The trains don't run so often,
But as they rumble through
They still shake the tunnel walls-
The same way the used to--
When dust would rain
And thick, black smoke would billow,
Stones and dirt fell crashing
Onto the tracks below.
The graffitied, brick-lined curves
Now keep the railway clear,
But that doesn't keep the tunnel
From holding Henry Dixon near.
Here he worked
And here he died,
But his spirit still walks
The tracks at night.
His lantern swings
With creaking rhythm.
He and the trains
Are the only ones welcome.
The roaring trains
With engines bright,
Besides Henry Dixon,
The only ones allowed light.
When the locomotives pull through,
The bricks resound, deafening;
But when they pull away,
The silence is more chilling.
The sound of footsteps softly follows.
It is then that the night watchman walks.
The cloudy light of his lantern drifts
As he searches for fallen rocks.
He knows not of the bricks around him
As he keeps his timeless vigil--
To clear the tracks for the trains to come
And prevent their being derailed.
Held by the tunnel
As if by force,
At home within it,
He keeps his course;
From east to west,
And then back east.
From his first watch,
He's never ceased.
And trespassers know
As they step inside
That their own world
Has been denied.
It's the material world
That doesn't exist.
The tunnel eliminates it,
And their lights go amiss.
And the old tunnel still yawns
From one end to the other,
Letting visitors escape
With shivering shudders.
But Henry Dixon still walks,
His lantern held high...
At home in the tunnel,
Instead of the sky.

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