A coal train
> 7pm – October 21, 2024
A coal train clacks and rumbles by.
There is a break in the track
And the wheels sound
Like a drummers patter.
Ratta-tat-tat
Ratta-tat-tat
Ratta-tat-tat
Ratta-tat-tat
This is a long one.
200 cars at least.
All of this coal,
How many centuries
Or millennia did it take?
Ratta-tat-tat
And here is it
Scraped from a mine
in the east
And shipped
across a continent
In days numbering few.
Where are you going?
Ratta-tat-tat
An electric plant south of here?
Certainly not to fill stockings
Or warm homes.
What do they do
When the plant calls and
The answer is,
‘Sorry, we’re all out of coal.’?
Ratta-tat-tat
Do tvs and dishwashers
Suddenly become paperweights?
Ratta-tat-tat
Will all those love songs
No long inspire
Expressions of passion?
Will they only be written
By daylight?
By candlelight?
Who will read in the dark,
When passions are most
Readily needed?
Ratta-tat-tat
At least painters will
Suddenly have a place again.
Only their pigments will
Be berries and mud.
7am – October 22, 2024
This morning
The train is now
Far away.
I can hear the whistle
Through the darkness
Howling its lone call.
Not to gather,
But to warn.
It warns us all at how
Modernity drives us apart
Creating social barriers
Through the constructs
Of Technology.
3pm – October 25, 2024
Over the midday din
Which includes the nearby
Hammers of a roofing crew
And some kind of excavator
Two blocks from here
I can hear the train still.
It is only a rumble now.
Like an undertow of sound
Pulling my thoughts to what
kind of cargo it must me moving.
Is it still coal?
Or oil?
Perhaps grain, or corn.
When last I saw that track
It was a half-mile of war machines.
Hummers and tanks and trucks.
Containers full of something
Designed to take life
As efficiently as possible.
Eliminating designated enemies
While turning a tidy profit for everyone upstream.
Ah, the wheels of industry.
That is the sound the
Train makes.
Only most of the west can’t hear
What it physically sounds like
When those wheels do their business.
That is a privilege for working class neighborhoods
And of course,
For those downrange.
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