Far From the Core

Steel threads connect horizons
As highways for beasts
Thundering
Once in steam
Now by diesel
Giving the ground
To tremor
At their mighty transit.

Walking the rails
I am part
Of their collective memory.

Here ascended the smolder
Billowing
In great exhalations of vapor
And spark
Gulped by the sky
In the fullness
Of its black and silver stream.

The frontier seemed to melt
At the progress
Of the Iron Horse
And to either side
Towns were rooted
And the untamed
Wild things
Were consigned to story
And fable.

Between the rails
Rode adventurers
Speculators
Prospectors
Merchants
Soldiers
And finally families
With a ticket and a hope.

America swallows its sons
And daughters
Until nothing remains
But memory
And then memory, too
Recedes
And vanishes
Along with the great
Mechanical beasts.

What remains are not even
Reasonable copies
Of what was.

Riders glide from coast to coast
In air conditioned decadence
All the while becoming
Lost
In the glow of digital screens
Lost
Like the Iron Horse
Lost
Like all is
Lost
The further we recede
From the core
Of what we were.