Lonesome Sound
LONESOME
SOUND
Old man said he could hear that whistle blow a hundred miles
and they could write a song about that.
Said he could tell how many cars a train freighted
just by how sad was its wail.
Old man said, trains usually sounded out at crossings or towns
or coming upon another train. Said
No. 149 out of St. Louis left
the towns a hundred miles back.
Had no call to think about
meeting another train'til Lander.
Or maybe Crawford.
Old man said, keening cross the plains like that
only thing took it to heart was
coyotes and jack rabbits. Mayhap
a snake or two, sunning hisself on the rails.
Said, last run she made, leaned on her whistle
from the Missouri straight through to the Rockies.
Never let up, just hollered cross the land
like the world come undone.
Like something lost
couldn't never be right again.
I said how that train was probly thinking
of the long empty plains ahead.
Of fenceposts ticking by
and cattle scabbing up the buffalo grass.
Thinking of passing unseen and unheard
the grassed-over soddies hunched at springs
once piped now trickling through old stock ponds.
Of empty match-box homesteads
timber-bleached and bowed before the
vast order of sun and sky.
Of tilted windmills wheeling, listless
as a fly wing-plucked and turning, turning
round on bleary heat-cracked panes
what look myopic upon the prairie
the grass, the sky, the land to come.
Old man looked at the middle distance. Said
don't know but she wailed for the thought
of her last pull through the pass at Lander stockyards.
Or for what she maybe wouldn't find
coming out t'other side.
Copyright © Cheryl Higgins | Year Posted 2015
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