The Train

There the metal cars are whizzing over the river on rusty scars
coins balancing boxes that roll across the land
inside them the lovers meet with rushed movements
over a rough jiggling train cabin bed and
through those panes of glass
are cottonwood trees, just seen on the bank,
bleeding, hugging hills and earth.
They are losing their white manes to the water
again.
All around them the land is flat and yellow and patient.
Those scars on which they roll stretch all the way to apple fields held by cousin creeks
where you can see
horses run
under and within dying purple moonlight while
snakes sleep within warm stone hearts inside the hill
(they are curled and they are dreaming).
By the gash of the road,
telephone poles stand there like
lonely soldiers thin with hunger for word from home,
bound in their silent electric war, their
crowns forever pierced and laced together as they mourn while marching.
This trestle once held some young men as they jumped from her strong,
frail-looking iron bones for fun
barely missing the rocks as their erect bodies hit the water,
feet found the sand, hitting hard. “Just bend your knees as you hit!” they yelled from the top.
It is mid-day when he drowns
and soon the newsmen steal his brother’s image; fractured,
arms up, in the water to his knees, crying in the river.
A train, indifferent, frenzied and insistent rushes through the belly of the trestle above him
rattling its old bones that groan with the weight of cousins and
countrymen.
The lovers are entangled and sleeping to
the jostling of the train
as it carries them away.