Fellow Traveler

Do you see it in this photograph
awareness of approaching doom?
Do you see it in his eyes that look ahead:
the no-return journey on a no-ticket train
one of so many travelers on that trip.
So many who left less than this
this photograph
these eyes that look ahead.

Now held in a grandson’s aging hand
traveler, you still look ahead
and warn us with your eyes:
never, never turn your back
when smoke is rising from
the smokestack of a no-ticket train.
Whoever’s on that train is
your sister, your brother
and you will travel with them
you are traveling with them
traveling in the smoke of a no-ticket train
in the smoke from a giant oven fed with bones.

Image: photo of a Holocaust victim from BBC World News