a long line of burnished and weathered railroad track has always quietly obsessed himwhere it came fromwhere it was going 

         the trains rumbling its haunting call  which so many seemed prone to describe as lonesome  he never understood that   and when it was posed in his presencedespite himself  despite knowing better  he gave them a stinkeye a direct look which readily might be translated as A cowpox on your house or accuse them of deficiencies 

he conceded it was a sonorous voice  however it was steeped in patience and recalled histories which most prefer to disregard or ignore for their own comfort deny their entitlement often which was not small  and were therefore to his mind terribly ungrateful        

he scrambled up onto their raised beds picked a favored cresoted tie and standing on it he looked long up one way

closed his eyes  turned a onehundredeighty and opened his eyes to look long up the other way

it was breathtaking  frightening   particularly when they ran perfectly straight in either direction  as if he stood on a splendid razor that could bisect him as it glided separately to each hued and coloured horizon

he adored their unquestionable steeliness fixed and homogeneous  their awesome lengths and timber and beds of stone which were unlike anything else in the world  hugging and bundling the land

you couldnt argue where the stone was quarried or the steel smelted  

however not its timber  few were wrest from the same tree and the ties laying side by side probably werent cut from the same forest  they were separate mongrels

standing atop of or walking on them he was poignantly aware they were uninscribed grave markers laid flat

he wondered if they could  would they have words regarding their circumstances

hewed eight nine feet long  a foot wide  eight ten inches deep

they were massive wounds

today he had the mind to extrapolate how many ties it took to lay a mile of track and from where he and his shadow stood in the sun slender mocking burdens the track ran a halfmile in either direction before rounding a curve

they were laid roughly on twentyfour inch centers

fivethousand twohundredeighty feet in a mile

multiplied by twelve inches

by longhand mathematics pencil on paper that equaled sixtythreethousand threehundredsixty inches

divvied up at twentyfour inches 

that equaled twothousand sixhundredforty ties per fucking mile

he had no idea its overall length or rail sidings within the country

                                                   but a whole lotta trees died to make the clickety-clack the lonesome(Die muthafucker!) train whistle blow

talk about holocausts

Jews aint got nothing on trees

theres a clamouring of souls seeping of sap and weeping they groan and sigh as iron wheels and laden or empty cars pass over their bodies  and he couldnt help himself but wonder if they might remember their shaky heads wending up through the soil  haloed by the sunremember their surly competition against brethren and others to grow and grow into exquisite organic towers before they were dismembered 

                                          harvested

harvested sounds better sounds prettier than murdered

you might think if a life doesnt scream bloody murder! when its killed if it doesnt bleed gouts of warm blood when its slaughtered then its death is inconsequential and is less than a human beings life

you might

1031,  Monday,  27  2. 17

0831,  Friday – Saint Patrick’s Day,  17  3. 17

1405 days or fewer remain

Led Zeppelin  Whole Lotta Love(and trees)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bcIjILqORM&list=PLgPF4S3J5qGR5FuMLPxmx-Z7HnQbyog1D