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
