I was cleaning up

... and found what I managed to write for my last writing circle meeting, inspired by Colville's Horse and Train painting. I thought since I had talked about it here I might as well post it.

Society’s train of thought is not my thought.

The world - friends, relatives, children- are aboard, helpless passengers on that train,

Engineered by unwitting enemies, fueled with black lies, chugging, now slower, now faster, but headlong down a seemingly inexorable track into the future.

There are no signal lights, no switches leading to some safe siding,

No station in sight where one can rest, change trains, just get off.

This dark, man-made, man centered creation proceeds mindlessly with much noise and only one eye, leaving black smoky smudges of itself in the air, on the news I hear and read every day.

But I am the dark horse, of course,

Not a passenger.

I am constantly offered a free ticket but I will not go along for the ride

And now having refused would I even be allowed aboard?

Perhaps. Not in the club car but

Relegated to the cattle car, destined for the ovens.

I can only be an outsider,

alone, separated from the herd,

a horse of another colour,

a creature of different design,

made of God, not man.

I want to be off the track, oblivious, in some sunny upland meadow, ignoring this behemoth.

Let it be upon their heads.

But should I not, following many before me, confront it? Charge it?

Foolish courage. Foolish duty. Foolish fool.

Put action in the picture, run the tape forward, there can be only one conclusion. The same conclusion we have seen countless times before. Vimy, Dachau, Dunkirk, Sarajevo, Rwanda. Bones not even remembered or mourned by descendants.

But I would rather die the beaten dark horse than live a passenger on this train.