Rail Song

Rail Song
By Paul I. Freet
My Grandpa rode the rails and drank cheap wine.
The Gods abhorred the mix and finally got even,
throwing him off a bridge onto rock and iron,
and for years he healed shattered bones and hurts
by telling of the long trains riding the night,
their power and dreams, and of all the right ones
he didn't take, and the slow sighs and lessons
where the gentle willows grew below the tracks
and the lonely river wandered bend by bend.
I was some like him and dreamed too much of far
places, and perhaps I saw a flame in his eyes
that had not been put out by the dark trains taken
in careless times. But I never rode the rails
much as I was tempted by their slow dancing
over the wide prairies, over the sweet land
with it's long memory, across restless rivers
winding in the rain. And the dreams of trains and smoke
have haunted my sleep like hymns in the dark
that speak of fierce, fire breathing Gods and cry,
of special places lost in time and of trying
to get there through frigid nights and white hot days,
and always and forever the rails and the wind singing.