FREIGHT TRAINS AND BOXCARS
I see the railroad run high
Above the course of the
Winding road
This is the remote landscape
Of the rockies
The wind of the Colorado at
The bottom of deep ravines
I think of days of hobos on
The pacific railroad
Pete Seeger doing a harmonica
Train whistle and
Blind sonny
Woodie Guthrie
Spirit voices of the boxcars
Car wheels clicking over
Sleepers
The bass strings thumping
Out a rattling caboose
Freedom whistles and hillbilly
Yodels
Singing songs of unfelt land
Small nourishing villages
Blues blowers in straw hats
Boogie woogie of jagged rock
Riding the ‘rods under carloads
Of steel
Hobos on the Wabash cannonball
The mingle of oil and mountain
Flower
Engine steam and morning fog
Driving rain on creosote ties
Tank spouts rattling
Gamblers. settlers miners
Soldiers and ordinary folk
Boarding trains in small town
Stations
Sheep dogs on cars ready
To scare off straying cows
Steam locomotives screeching
Along blinding curves in
Oregon
along sawmills and
Great warehouses
The green of timber touching
The sky
Running over deep chasms
And bridges
The song of the hammering
Driving wheels
Heavy jawed breakmen in
Oil cloth pants
Smoking a pipe with hand on
The throttle
Construction camps and shanty
Towns
Side door pullman and smokers
Crowded with passengers
Singing songs
Telling tall stories
“Train butchers” peddling
Orange-aide
I think of Jesse James
With a colt 45 standing
On a depot platform having
Robbed a train car on a
Missouri platform about to
Get his getaway to Kansas city
Transient trackmen riding
Boxcar Pullman going to lumber
Camps in Washington doing
Roadwork in raw untamed
Territory
Scoffing down black cawfee
And rye bread dipped in
Sowbelly grease at mess tables
In roadside tents
Pacific slim Syracuse shine
And slim jim from vinegar hill
I think of negro work songs
And the voice of Irish immigrants
As they told their tales
A land of being discovered and
Miles of track and the rhythm of
The engine
“Standing on a platform making
A cheap cigar waiting for an old
Freight train that carries an empty car.”
Ana Christy

from “real junkies don’t eat pie”