Empty Train

Empty Train

I was sitting in the park today

Reading a good book

Watching my young children play

I heard the sound of the approaching train

Off in the distance

Beyond the river

The train came by

Crossing the river on the great, high bridge

Making quite the commotion

Stopping the traffic

Turning heads

No longer reading, I felt a notion

Then I noticed something

The engines were pulling nothing

Nothing but empty cars

No goods

No solutions

Nothing, nothing at all

Just empty car after empty car

Disrupting the placidity of the afternoon

At first I thought

“What a waste,

What a waste of time, of resources

What a waste to haul nothing around at all.

All this nothing cacophony disturbing our thrall.”

But then I thought, “What if they are returning the emptiness

To the place where it can be filled again?”

What if wisdom, our eternal friend,

Is trying to teach me to see things in a whole new way?

What if wisdom is trying to say

“Don’t assume all of this emptiness is a waste”?

Sometimes I have to give up the less I’m holding onto

In order to grasp the more

Sometimes I have to carry my emptiness

To a place where I can be filled again, implore

I must cross the rivers, traverse the mountains

Find someone with whom I can be a friend

Make plenty of noise for all to know

My emptiness is there for fulness to flow