After miles of coasting,
trailing a stretch of steel remembered
more as an artery than a scar,

(back when the sun-stained arms
and scratchy palms that laid each track,
across an endless America felt
ageless and exhausted;
gripping great-grandbabies and bibles and whittled pipes,
fingers coiled and knotted with stories, ready to spring forth
and croon out if only they were ever asked.

They didn’t talk much during the inbetween:
that window of time when their bodies were no longer
cracking and howling, rooting rungs into dry grass
from ocean to ocean; fitting the landscape
with a skeleton of its own-
but before the true rest
when they let their bones shake out the tight
grip of untold tales
and sink into the dirt they helped carve.

You think of them now as dust and a rosary planted
under pine, a Sunday grace, a shared plot.
You do, don’t you?
You’re not really looking.