Trucks Being Dropped From Cranes
April 14 2009


The rail-yards occupy the flat weedy space
between the town and the lake,
like a rusty iron belt
cinching-up the skinny waist
of a seedy inner-city.

You pick your way across
track after track,
a vast no-man’s land
booby-trapped with trip-wires.
The way parallel lines never meet,
endless in both directions.
Or watch your step
that awkward stretch
from tie to tie.
Which seem to say
you don’t fit-in down here —
soft pink flesh
among grunting locomotives
heavy gauge steel.

The first time you heard the shunting of trains
you were startled awake,
wondering
at trucks being dropped from cranes,
or earthquakes, bomb practice
elevators crashing.
But it was railway-men
cursing, cadging naps,
sipping from a thermos of hot black coffee
forming convoys in the dark —
diesel jockeys
assembling cars.

So that two lovers
spooned against each other
on some wind-swept prairie farm
will be reassured
by the sound of trains in the night
thundering by.
Until the rise and fall
of the final whistle
pierces the cool air,
its plaintive wail raising the hair of their necks
— like wolves, howling,
somewhere
out there
in the dark.

And in its wake, clinching tighter
the silence
is almost deafening.