Unplayed games of tic tack toe
crisscross the sky. It's a fine day to fly.
A flight path rises from Standiford Field.
It thins and spreads directly overhead,
prompting thoughts of faraway places.
It disappears toward Chicago,
as insubstantial yet as real as dreams.

Train whistles once inspired wanderlust
in us. Today they stir memories.
Everyone past a certain age has a story.
I had a friend who hopped
aboard a caboose when he heard
they'd soon be taken off the tracks.
He got kicked off in Cincinnati
and someone had to go get him.

Some years back the local paper
carried the story of a woman who told
her husband she'd always wanted to go
to Opryland. For her next birthday he gave
her a roundtrip ticket to Nashville
on the L & N. On the way home
she disappeared between Lebanon Junction
and Louisville. Her luggage arrived without her.
Sometimes dreams come true in unexpected ways.

--Elaine Parker Akin