Heather in full bloom.
Purple spread along the rocky grade.
My wife says, “Are you sure?
Do you really want to go the long way ’round?”
She’s the kind who likes
Getting home to her comfy rocker lounger.
I insist we take the canyon road,
Leaving town the back way along the river.
“I haven’t driven this way
Since before the railroad shut down completely.
That time I saw a boxcab,
Pantograph pressed tight against the power line.”
Now she drives in silence.
Highway winds through Yakima Canyon
narrowing as I look out.
Graveled roadbed—dead across the river,
choked with noxious weeds.
No sign of commerce since the '80s.
Now—
Only wind where something vivid used to move.
It breaks my heart as history unfolds the years.
Overhead wires gone, current dissipated,
Powerhouse tumbled into rubble—vanquished
Along with engine's arc and surge.
The river rushes through untroubled,
unchanged, indifferent,
carving what it always has,
a different kind of current.
Leaves me with memory and distance
and something like love for what is gone.
Author’s note: This poem is set in the Yakima River Canyon, where remnants of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad remain beside the active BNSF line and the highway.