Moving:

night-silent, quick-metal

rail cold steel

switchman’s towers

ablaze

Christmas reds and greens

Airy trails of steam

sleepy cities

sooted tenements

held together by clothesline jungles

sparse five a.m. highway population:

cross-country marathon Chevys

top-heavy with cargo

hostile high-beam eyes

flashing at the grade crossings

orderly cornfields

husky, wisp-haired soldiers

Sergeant Scarecrow

frayed Levi’s

empty legs dancing

uncivilized hills

stiff-eared deer

look on

sniffing remnants

of locomotive smoke

quick now

over toothpick trestles

canyons below

carved by thin green ribbons

snaking

faceless mountains

lit to a blue character

stars extinguished

one by one

violet, crimson sky

meadow mists

melt into the clover

a wide pie-slice of red heat

lodged between the hills

tumbles airborne birds

with magnificence

and a million furnaces

up to yellow

up to white

spherical splendor

keeping pace with the journey

to Omaha by noon.

Good morning.

[1969]

06/25/2003

Posted on 06/26/2003
Copyright © 2025 Bruce W Niedt