In a graveyard, facing a river
a break in the trees separates ryegrass from rail yard
where you can wait beside wild-grown strawberries
for the train to pass.
Fifty years ago you wouldn’t wait–boxcars served steel mill
coal and raw iron, extracted putrid slag,
buried the valley in metal-screech; cacophony. Tracks
dutifully polished, rust chipped loose and wiped away, each
line like a vein of silver shot through the riverbank.
The Mill decays, rust sprouting like
brownish lichens from its corpse, picked clean, too large
to be sacred. Painted backdrop of industry
held rigid by thick plank-braces.
Railcars stunted, passing unurgent around riverbends,
under the bridge which shivers in their rumbling. Like pilgrims
they trundle, bands of one ignored, or
pitied by notable men with short shadows.
The train has gone; listen closely for bass-growls
scattered like pennies in a fountain,
then swallowed whole by a barking,
immigrant city.
