The Trains of Cunning

The trains of cunning Two men in a vast field of grain waited for the trains to meet on a one-track railway line, one a mathematician had worked out where the train would meet the other was a reporter skilled in muddying the news. Of the train drivers, one has a skilled hand used to getting his way, the other was an upstart backed by western money and told to call the older man’s bluff. And there, in the brilliant winter light, they saw the trains At great speed nearing, the point of no return. There was a side track where one of the trains could stop And let the other one through, but would they choose To be sensible; we shall not know. I mighty missile struck the track and blew part of it away The driver of the eastern train was able to stop, but not so the driver of the western train that ran onto the prairie that had no cowboys or cattle and exploded. The mathematician was happy his calculation was right the reporter wrote an obfuscating article telling readers the west had won; the man from the east smiled his calculations had been spot on.