Rail

I find it here in the wild alfalfa, head fullof anti-psychotics and blue rain. Twenty years oldon a freight train riding the soy fieldsinto the night. Leaning away from the shortgrassprairie, the black Mississippi of dream.My brother asleep on the well-wall beside me,nodding his head to the sway. What homeare we leaving? What distances blurthe electric fence? What hundred low thunderingwheels of darkness are coming to carry usthere? Rain and the singing wind, overthe auto-racks. Staring out west at the starsof our Gods and the lonely dark stars of our hearts.Boarded-up store fronts, burned downapartments, highway signs that only namethe dead. We cross the station tracks,the broken legs of Sunday chairs left rustingin the yards. We know the way the story ends.Still, the whistle blows. The flare-stacks whiptheir excess methane candles againstthe night. The wheels that brought us this farstill roll, still churn the polished iron ash.The road goes on. The highway turns a deepershade of black. And as the sun sinks downon the eastern Montana hills, peppered with horsesand gun-shot cars, the rails still lead ussomewhere else, and shine in the falling light.