- from 1982? -
Silence. Silence, is all I hear.
Darkness is all I see.
Ideas pent up are fighting to get out.
The clock shows a quarter till three.
My body, at rest for some time now,
wishes my mind would follow.
But to think that such thoughts might otherwise be lost
is a much harder pill to swallow.
Out of the bed, and on with the light.
The worst writer's cramp, is the one I can't fight.
So I write my mind blank and try sleep once more.
Till another new thought unlocks my mind's door.
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Back story...
This was in a folder of my high school stuff. It is 40+ years old. A folded up piece of yellow legal pad paper. I did not change it, (just added the picture) and included it here.
I was probably 15 or 16 at the time. ADD, and ADHD was not a thing yet. I believe alot of kids, including me, had a touch of it. My attention span is still nothing to brag... hey look something shiny.
There were lots of nights growing up, that I didn't get much sleep. I'd raise the window in my room, and sit at the wooden table where I did my homework, and listen for the train a few miles away.
On a quiet night you could hear the click ckick (pause) click click (pause) of the train wheels going over a crossing. I listened for the train horn. In Tullahoma it blew several times, at each crossing. It blew one time at Ralph Broaderick Road, on the hill out of town, and once, at downtown Normandy.
I'd try to figure out where the train was, and if it was going North, toward Nashville or South, toward Chattanooga, by the number of times the horn blew.
Sometimes I heard the chorus of chirping night time bugs and critters around our house, and in the swamp a half mile away, or a owl calling out to another owl.
Sometimes I'd turn on the lamp and doodle a little drawing, or read, or write something down.
I suppose the little poem above came from one of those nights.