Train Tickets

Human dignity rubbed between two coins
Measured on the long shadows stretched
Ticking time marked on sheets of paper,
White-shaded across the pale blue sky;
Punched tickets littering the station
Of life and death, trampled beneath feet
Until they turn a yellow path,
building year after year
And the train master becomes better
at selling the tickets and finding loose change
Between the seats and in the pockets
Of those fallen to the tracks and forgotten