Best Rail Poems

A little girl
She comes to a land of ghosts
Almost empty streets
She wonders
Where are all the people
No one here looks like her
Within her heart
Emotions stir

It is so cold
Foreign 
Lonely
Where oh where, is the mountain of gold
Her mom and dad they are so bold
Pioneers
Adventures
People of action
Not of...

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rusty rails touching 
    a salty handcar within 
the kingly elk's plain


rusty rails
    salty handcar
camera obscura...

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Twas a little piece of heaven in a bigger spot of hell,
Nestled in the bosom of the Sierra Nevadas.
I wasn't sure just what planet I had just landed on,
An alien invader in a strange mountain fold.
Oh, they looked at us with those skeptical stares,
Knowing full...

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An old rail fence lingers by the meadow
Humbled by the toll of seasons spent
Posts erect, still standing at attention
Arms outstretched, embracing that which was
Many years ago...

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Of warm tiny tears; twas a long night....
Baby swept away amid taunting gray as grim
Photographic images their dreamscapes montrous
Montage bold yet cold, this shivering plight: black pearls
Coloured stones mortified his mosaic an albatros in timeless gales
Insidious insomnia; insolent's ancient anthology spreading wide these wings
Posed a...

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By way of Amtrak we journeyed slowly but surely from Sacramento to Chicago.  We departed Monday morning July 21st at the scheduled time of 11:09 am.  From that moment on, one could feel that the words “on time” would elude us in the...

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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...

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Passing by the Moss Covered Rail Tides

The sound of the flowing water
Eases my stressed mind
As it rolls over the rocks
Passing by the moss covered rail tides
It flows so smoothly
So free
No concern for its destination 
Flowing along so freely
To a place it does not know 
Though...

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Do you hear the devil's laughter?
low within the marsh waters
rustling high the tree tops
Answer not with prayer
but within a smirk of doubt
Don't tilt the boat least you fall in
and a fat gator eats you alive for lunch
Or an angry snapping turtle bites a hunk of...

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Thoughts On The Rail


I ponder on, this big world, you and I
Does love ride the hard gusting wind
Moving its beauty about in a sunny sky
A journey magnificent but without an end!

I hope, life will forever hold anew
Eternity and the joys of sweet dreams
So often united...

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The hoot of the train was shrill enough to bring me back to my consciousness, 
With eyes half shut I could see the sunrise albeit my body was in oppressive soreness. 
Thankful was I that the night was over, 
And a ray of hope was...

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death speeding down the rail
 desperate last breaths make appeal
 ‘stead of a dash to the rescue
 speaking volumes
 about values
 camera flashes for
 front page display...

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My grandpa built a split rail fence. 
He did the best he could.
He hand-dug every post hole, 
Sweat and muscle, rough-hewn wood.
Didn’t compromise his standards, 
He was sure to do it right.
He made it bull strong, horse high and hog tight.

The carnival just came to...

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Gypsy of the Railways

I march to a different drummer
My life it is my own
I'm an explorer of experience
That is how I'm known

I've seen snow in South Dakota
I've been on the Vegas strip
Had barbeque in Kansas
My life has been a trip

I'm a gypsy of the railways
I'm...

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All night I travel, in a dream…
asleep since midnight - plus sixteen.
A ghost train’s whistle, softly drawn
through orange-black at cusp of dawn.
The phantom locomotive chugs
with each and every stroke,
then crests the hill, going faster still,
churning out black ash and smoke.
From this smoke cloud falls a...

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