Choo Oh Choo

The wind blew out the final words
from one exhausted, bowed, eccentric train
and the monkeys held it's eye wide-open
and the monkeys didn't close the windows 
and the monkeys let in, and out, the same comatose drivel upon prodigious streets. 

It was never a better rider,
cloaked in posters for a trade 
but was as humble and as comfortable as  
it could manage.
One warm winter the engineer lisped whilst stroking its steel skin
'The old dame willn't make it, she hasn't a pretty enough face'
when its infatuation was with each steaming chord.

Perhaps it was never a better rider
or a singing steamer  
or wore a perfect face
but it never let up, and it never gave in, and it never took a breath. 
Somedays it had, admittedly, been beetle-browed,
aches and pains could be heard in the wheels 
and the stress was evident by more frequent charcoal coughs
but the old dame was never startled  
until her scrapping day.