That Gleaming Rail

i pot bellied boasting navels shiny round ball bearing stomachs haloing out of diesel grime over alls and silver buttoned railway insignias these long waxed pig curled mustache workmen rotated their lives between shifts of day and night with metal lunch boxes and coffee tin flasks strolling main road home or to that gleaming rail that provided a town’s livelihood my grandfather worked that rail and my father too providing me with the means to take that broke back-heart break scenic route out of town for good and forgetting until now ii coming back everything changed and the fat men were now old and wiry sitting on subsidized railway porches looking on main road maybe thinking rail going to that station I found it desolated and the once shimmering humming rail all rusted up and silent I touched it and imagined the once proud spirit of it corroding away as the blue collar folks on the porch