Torched

Feb 1 2019

The steel rails froze,

and the big locomotive

   –   diesel throbbing

steam boiling from its black exhaust   –

was stopped stock-still;

like an ambush predator

taking slow deep breaths

its power barely contained.

A cold snap, we say;

as brittle as the temperature,

as brief

as a single sharp clap.

But the deep freeze

was here to stay

and we all hunkered down indoors.

So cold

rail switches had frozen shut, steel rails shrunk.

So they set the tracks on fire;

the stink of kerosene,

flames licking at blackened wheels,

and warm refracting air

shimmering above them.

The Windy City, Second City, City of Big Shoulders.

Second only to New York

   —  which doesn't burn, but smoulders

like a sultry ingenue.

Unlike Chicago,

where fire and ice

cancel out

and no one gets too hot or cold.

Not in the mid-west

on the shores of a great lake

where heavily built men

and their big-boned wives

refuse to put on airs,

two-handed eaters

of Malnati's deep-dish pie

Portillo's Italian beef.

I saw the ground ablaze

as if the end of times had come.

And thought hell must look like this,

a glowing bed of flames

engulfing the world.

A premonition

of the apocalypse.

Desperate measures

in the war on nature

we will never win.

Because our cities cannot bear this cold,

as houses crack

rails heave

a hulking diesel stands,

the pent-up strength

of 3,000 horses

strain against their reins.