Rumble of heavy railcars
throughout the dark house:
an unending pulsing drone
of hoppers, flatcars, reefers, grain haulers,
intermodals, centrebeams, tank cars.
No train now passes through this valley.
Beyond my walls is only the silence
of the surrounding mountains
under May’s stars. Indoors, however, steel wheels
press down on steel rails, and the clatter seems
ominous, as if the cargo
constitutes a threat beyond “Hazardous Goods,”
as if this routing through my rooms
is a confirmation of trouble, not a warning.
Ordinarily, a quiet trails the end of any train
while it shrinks up the tracks.
At my house, when the sound fades
and disappears for a time, it leaves in its wake
a disturbance—as on mornings after an unsettling dream,
long after the nightmare’s details
have vanished, a sense of menace
fogs my day. Where the black train
was dispatched from is as shrouded
as its destination
and what powers its travel. Yet boxcar
after boxcar, gondola after gondola,
is an insistent presence in my mind.
I feel I cannot escape
climbing aboard, that this conveyance
will draw me into the other night.
