Fifty-Six, Exactly
I watched a train once—
rumbling in the rain.
A thread a mile long.
I watched the locomotives
parading, prancing,
growling like leopards.
So grimy, so loud
at the head of the train.
Monarchs of the iron trail.
And I counted
all the rain-soaked cars.
One, two, three, four, five.
Yellow and gray
and blue and brown and red.
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
In the veil of rain,
boxcars with open doors
winked at me and fled.
Out of the dreary mist,
a dance of steel on steel
drummed stubborn rails.
The thirteenth adorned
with Canadian flag.
Manitoba winter wheat—
interchanged in brotherhood
across a border
of close-knit kinship.
And I counted all the cars.
Nineteen, twenty.
They kept coming.
Four, once white, exhibited
murals of graffiti;
art of a generation.
Twenty-six through thirty-two.
Filled with bright new
imported automobiles—
low down payments
at zero percent interest
with your trade-in.
Five battered coal cars,
blackened and disheveled,
gossiped and grumbled—
thumping by like a band
of peg-legged seadogs
complaining of miles they've trudged.
Thirty-eight, forty, forty-four.
Seven identical flat cars,
carried semi-trailers and farm machines.
America's industrial soul
fleeting by in the rain
at fifteen miles an hour.
Commerce
not yet claimed
by the Interstate.
Eleven tank cars,
streaked tan and orange
came before the closing act.
Green, number 12511.
Long rusting scratch
front to back.
Wide-vision cupola
boarded up with plywood,
eyes closed in slumber.
Two men in baseball hats
on the caboose platform
waved to me in the rain.
Silent sentries
guarding the end
of this rolling saga.
And I counted all the cars.
Fifty-six, exactly.
Stories told in passing.
I, the only witness,
swallowed by the rain soaking
my coat, matting my hair.