Railroad Days
        for Scott Sparling

 

In the Salt Lake railyard
on what would be our lone trip,
Harp told me why he bummed
the country, criss-crossing
from Lansing to Pine Bluff,
Corvallis to Pensacola:
inside a locomotive, he died
nightly in his dreams,
and the end was like a free-
falling upward, a high dive
flight toward the stars--
and how one night he dreamed
he lay flat on the rails,
the Amtrak Empire Builder
approaching, its whistle
like something out of Genesis,
and it was that roaring
engine that called: Harp, change
your life--heaven is everywhere
the next freight train goes.


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