Man sleeping on tracks hit, killed

The following brief online article caught my eye, and then my heart while I ate lunch. And so I wrote in response...



An unidentified man was struck and killed by a train about 6:30 Thursday night near South Washington Street, according to Kylie Strange, a Greenville County deputy coroner. Strange said the train engineer saw a man sleeping on the tracks and tried to stop. However, the train ran over the man, she said. Strange said there is no reason at this point to suspect foul play. An autopsy will be performed today, she said. By Nan Lundeen, Greenville News Staff Writer, 19 December 2008


Those Who Sleep on Tracks

Christmas will still be the same without you.
But that’s something you probably knew all along.
It didn’t really matter where you were,
Or if you were, for us to sing our Silent Night.

But someone will remember, the conductor perhaps:
A sleeping body, the sighting, and particularly the impotence,
To stop the rolling steel of heedless freight cars -
Much less the growing egomania of heedless hearts.

Oblivious to the warning of the train’s blasting horn,
We’ll stumble in a stupor along the tracks of ease
Celebrating the Christ-child’s coming as always we’ve done;
Never realizing he was lying there beside you, to keep you warm.

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