~

late winter’s dusting,
on tarnished ores;
a dreamer’s seeds,
these rails once bore.
rain-washed colors,
on sun-warped steel;
their conjured hopes,
an age once real;
oxidized
by rust and time
blackened timbers,
no longer bind;
what still remains
are worn out ties,
a distant memory,
of centuries gone by,
now mere after-sighs.
structures standing,
but just by chance...
a gust may blow them down;
these buildings where
men’s dreams once danced,
now a ghost, this town.
though no soul is left inside,
still a body here resides.
so long ago
her carried goods,
these rails rode,
to distant homes,
built dreams of wood;
like dandelion wishes,
scattered... gone,
tracks going nowhere,
now a fading ode,
just another dusty song.
for advancing progress
never fails to leave
someone's dying dream behind.

~

*post script.

Oregon’s hills and back country hide these relics of a time when a nation’s spirit was fed by the sounds of industry, steel and steam, the whir of saws, and men calling, “timber”... long before the age of wood and rail were left in a saw-dusty bin of history by the sweeping hand of time.  i could easily be persuaded that this change was for the best, yet this can't erase the longing sense, left beneath my breast... advances do not come without leaving something or someone behind.

~and for Harlan, who loved this one best~

"for tandem is the ever-changing, graying color of their fierce attached tenacity"

waking/walking in
careful pacing regular lock steps,
like new cadets, counting cadence,
in perfect silent, almost motionless,
except for the minuscule quivering of
slightly parted moving lips

these two elders,
still now plebes,
freshmen
but of a latter, graduated stage,
demonstrating robustly
the slow shuffle-along,
a well practiced dance conjured
'in tandem'

her arm, crooked in his,
his other hand,
in protective custody of a
knight's armored chain glove
encasing hers,
he, shuffling just,  
a precise, intended half-a-beat slower
lest she ever think
that she, ever be a drag upon him

hair, his,
threaded with daily,
new arriving grays,
proudly accepted
as the privilege of
graceful aging

hers,
disguised with periodic outings,
outings for the hidings of life's bookmarks,
conceding nothing ever to
time's lunatic desire to separate them

modest in dress,
styling hints of  pasts' elegant,
the man's hat defiant,
daringly jaunty angled,
a small scarf to handbag knotted,
matching his Windsor knotted tie

the passers-by, all smile,  
the signal charm of an
end game processional,
thinking so sweet,
yet mine eyes detect more,
something
hardy and radical

a fierce, fierce fierceness,
both fighters in the resistance,
armed with tandem tenacity,
ground given,
but only inches surrendered,
wounds resisted by
scar skin toughened
by the caress of ions bonding
under the pressure
of atomic level mutuality

worn out,
well past Purple Hearts,
no capitulation feared,
to the ever changing,
enemies' new disguises,
they,
a two person platoon,
each,
having the other's back

and I burst into tears on the street,
a train of out loud moans,
even groans emitted,
like a string of perfect pearls
breaking,
clattering on an asphalt terrain

weeping
not
from visions of the inevitable,
sighing
not
from the certitude of a
cycle's uptime ending

but jealous furious by this reminder delightful,
angry at myself, for having lost so many wasted years,
mine, the loss greatest, for absent was the
fierce tenacity of tandem