Two Tennessee yahoos
trekked the train tracks
outside of town. They
were always at it --
half habit, half quest
for something new.
Anything.

The older man -- perhaps
the father or brother
of the younger -- had
hit on a plan of his own:
Today he would make
something new happen.

It was an act straight out
of a John Berryman
"Dream Song," even though
he had never heard
of the poet or his
magnum opus.
Little did it matter.

Down the tracks, you
could pick up the shrill horn
of a locomotive, barreling
blindly toward its stop
in town -- a Siren solo
that nobody paid
attention to anymore.

But the old man heard.
He stepped more evenly between
the rails, tightly shut his eyes,
and lifted his arms wide,
as if meeting an old friend,
The train sped on, clacking
clinically over the creosote ties.

The Cyclops eye on the face
of the locomotive shone
like a laser into the autumn twilight.
The older man braced himself,
deafened by the lonesome horn.
Like that, the train whooshed past
on the second rail.

He had picked the wrong track
to die on. He fell to his knees,
the horn of the train still rattling
his brain. Years later, he would
tell this tale -- half habit, half quest.
And we could still smell the scent
of something real coming close.