He came down the line where the black rails gleam,
with a coat gone thin and a restless dream,
and a past that burned at the ragged seam,
like a life half-lived in a broken scheme.
He took from a store in a boarded town,
where the dust hung thick and the sun beat down,
left a door half-wide and a clerk face-down,
and a silence settling like a heavy crown.
They spoke of a woman he left one spring,
when the thaw ran high and the fields would sing,
but he cut that tie like a useless string,
and he carried the loss like a hidden sting.
In Memphis he walked by the river’s bend,
where the current dragged what it couldn’t mend,
and he watched it roll like an old false friend,
that will take what you are and not pretend.
The law wrote his name but it never stayed,
just ink that blurred and a mark that strayed,
like a truth half-told or a debt delayed,
or a memory worn that begins to fade.
By winter his shadow had drawn in tight,
and his breath came slow in the brittle night,
and the stars looked dim with a borrowed light,
like they’d seen his road and had lost the sight.
One night where the tracks split east and west,
he stepped down hard with a hand to his chest,
like a man worn through who can’t find rest,
and the dark closed in like an answered test.
Now the rails still hum through the lowland hill,
through the frozen cut and the iron chill,
and some say they hear, when the world goes still,
not a ghost, not a name—just a broken will.
Apr 20
Apr 20, 2026 at 7:49 AM UTC
He came down the line where the black rails gleam,
with a coat gone thin and a restless dream,
and a past that burned at the ragged seam,
like a life half-lived in a broken scheme.
He took from a store in a boarded town,
where the dust hung thick and the sun beat down,
left a door half-wide and a clerk face-down,
and a silence settling like a heavy crown.
They spoke of a woman he left one spring,
when the thaw ran high and the fields would sing,
but he cut that tie like a useless string,
and he carried the loss like a hidden sting.
In Memphis he walked by the river’s bend,
where the current dragged what it couldn’t mend,
and he watched it roll like an old false friend,
that will take what you are and not pretend.
The law wrote his name but it never stayed,
just ink that blurred and a mark that strayed,
like a truth half-told or a debt delayed,
or a memory worn that begins to fade.
By winter his shadow had drawn in tight,
and his breath came slow in the brittle night,
and the stars looked dim with a borrowed light,
like they’d seen his road and had lost the sight.
One night where the tracks split east and west,
he stepped down hard with a hand to his chest,
like a man worn through who can’t find rest,
and the dark closed in like an answered test.
Now the rails still hum through the lowland hill,
through the frozen cut and the iron chill,
and some say they hear, when the world goes still,
not a ghost, not a name—just a broken will.
Inspired by a rough couple months hopping freight and by the song “Railroad Bill” by Etta Baker