Final Destination

by Patrick Theron Erickson

Your bags are packed

The ink pen you purchased
for the occasion at the corner kiosk
is waiting for you to sign out

Before the ink is dry
in the guest register

The concierge is waiting
to see you off

The train is waiting
for you to board

Your bags are stowed

Soon, very soon
the train will embark
and round the bend

and disappear
over the far horizon
in a puff of smoke

and you with it.

Patrick Theron Erickson, a resident of Garland, Texas—a Tree City, just south of Duck Creek—is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself. His work has appeared in Cobalt Review, Literati Quarterly, Burningword Literary Journal and Grey Sparrow Journal, among other publications, and more recently in Right Hand Pointing, The Penwood Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Wilderness House Literary Review and Danse Macabre.

His poem Black on Black was published in Deep South earlier this month.