Ahellas Alixopulos | + Follow Poet |
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Railroad Spikes,Musings On Memory

Some pin memories delicately
and precisely like butterflies.
I, however, use railroad spikes.

This morning was spent well,
walking along a high desert trail,
close to some old railroad tracks.
My sister had shown them to me yesterday.

I am looking for signs that I was ever here before
today.
A boot print, perhaps, to match with my own
today.
Some lightly crushed sticky poppies or some low
purple lupine or yellow cactus flowers to bring back
the remembered scraps of yesterday's conversations.

Note that spring has passed with a large ant mound, bigger than
yesterday. Did I really climb to the top of the rock outcrop
moments ago?
Looking North down the valley, sun at my back, 
Arkansas rippling nearby, and I'm moving along the tracks now,

Paralleled by old fashioned telephone poles, so low to the ground,
pottery and glass connectors on each one sparkling in the early morning sun.
Memory take note! This could be a decent poem.
Old rusty metal parts everywhere piled haphazardly by a thousand repair
crews running these rails forty, fifty, eighty years ago.
Are there any still around to remember those days on the rails?

Making my way back to my niece's house that I left some hours ago
and I pick up one of the railroad spikes in my path.
I'll put it in a drawer next to the spike that I and my young son found
near to his dying grandmother's house some years ago.
I knew that we would never be back and I wanted him to remember
those times.

I mean to ask my mother when I get back to my niece's house if
her "Popdaddy" ever prospected these hills.
I imagine him coming out of the hills to share a cup of coffee
with the railroad repair crew some eighty years ago.

My mother fades in and out of consciousness, unable to connect
her random disjointed memories. Will she have an answer?
Or will she ask me again just who I am and
what part of her life was I.

Two spikes to mark the passing of two ladies
and myself.
I'll put them in a drawer together, and some time, someone,
perhaps a grandchild,
will ask about them,
and I'll say,
"You know, I picked them up somewhere,
I just don't know exactly where,
or why."

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