(Dick Feller)

 

I sit upon the bed in my rented room and watch

The broken shadows from the street lights playing tag upon the wall

Down the street a neon light is reaching out to mock the night

And all the little fears that darkness brings.



The smoke of my last cigarette still hangs upon the air and yet

I reach to light another from the pack that's nearly gone

And the dawn seems a million miles away but all the while



Down in the trainyard the graveyard shift had just come on

And turned their ragged collars against the drizzling rain

Back and forth the yard engine goes about the pulling out

The railroad cars that soon will be making up the train

That's gonna be come the morning.



I wonder if I ever cross the mind of someone

That I might have learned to love

Had I ever chose to try

Or did she fail to think about me in the lonely nights without me

Was she the last to care if I should live or die.



I've been a nameless ghost that rides the empty wave of memory

In the dark deserted closets of the mind of someone else

And now I'm a ghost unto myself but still I know.



And now I cross the room and stand before the open window

And reach out to touch the rain that's slowly falling on my hand

The pavement hot and cold below looks back at me and seems to know

It ends without a tear without a smile.



And in those last brief seconds could it be I was mistaken

Or did I hear a voice somewhere that softly called my name

Or was it just a whistle of a train for all the while



Down in the trainyard the graveyard shift had just gone home

To hang their clothes to dry them bar their doors against the rain

The yard engine breathe a sigh Then pulls a last grey coal car by

Then moves aside to look with pride Upon the new born train

That I won't take come the morning.



I wonder if I ever cross the mind of someone

that I might have learned to love

Had I ever chose to try

Or did she fail to think about me in the lonely nights without me

Was she the last to care if I should live or die...