Rail Lines

©2012 Jennifer Holan

Crossing the plains
makes you look forward
into possibility
without limits
heedless of arbitrary invisible borders.
The railway hisses: Expand;
inhale the sun, devour the distance.
Track the tribes who shadow the herds
who follow the forage.
You may leave miles behind,
counting by days' journeys instead.
Wind-cleansed, speed-soothed,
you feel free and mighty,
unimpeded, controlling, served from a great tray;
the tallest thing around.
Breath of the bison; vision of the floating eagle.

But mountain folk creep into the rocks,
pushing up through the pines,
leaning on layered plates
which slip and settle in flaky lakes.
Here, where every raindrop knows
which way is down
and continues on till it smells the sea,
some take comfort in the looming presence
of the stony silent ones,
the honored parents and guardians of the ancestors,
whose culture is stillness;
they have almost settled,
yet the gravel, ice, cold streams,
animals, skiers,
shadows and sunrises
trickle down in tracery,
tickling them to trembling insomnia.
Rivers sweep round their skirts' curves;
they cover their heads,
wrap their shoulders in mists.
Bulk of bear, tilt of elk.

Then the railway plays at slow spidercraft,
hooking thin bridges,
probing passageways,
catching toeholds on the slope,
shaping trails and grades by degrees.

Some threads break. Dreams fall.
Foreign men crack and run mad.
Gold is crushed under its weight.
The railway shrinks
to flightless worminess,
and loops its trains through holes
while glaciers weep
and step back;
towering forests shoot up and break down
in beetle-bred blues,
dry chips,
snuffed burners,
smoke.
Now the best hope for pounding steel
and bobbing balance sheets
is fog, snow,
dawnglow,
old-growth glory
shown by photos
and "Oh!" (or "Yoho!").
Like gasping gaping fish
turning pink
or looking through glass
we're drawn up each year
from everywhere.
Prince Rupert's pipers
march us aboard the rails;
Canada reels us in
and carries on.