Locomotives

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder”

“Out of Sight out of mind“

It’s hard to leave the past behind

 

And so the heart lingers in the past
on a hitch pulled by the hurried brain
It’s a reluctant train 

howling through the fog

of memory and destinations promised

 

And the premise is precarious
on the grinding wheels

that carry us to the place
where we seek solace,
a load to relieve

 

It’s a depot where we rest long enough
to gather vagabonds
and glares from trainspotters
before we chug on
with the weight of all that freight,
smokestacks spewing
wasted time
and still attached to what’s behind

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Santa Fe in September

It’s been a long, hot summer
stretched out

like lazy men resting in hammocks,
and now, driving the country roads,
the landscape cloaked in sepia tones;
yellows, browns, and clay

and the weight of sun’s rays

hot on my collarbone

are what drive me home.

 

My troubles?

Just those water slick mirages

400 ft ahead.

 

The tumbleweeds ‘long the railroad tracks

are spent and dehydrated tangled brat’s heads

waiting for Autumn’s reaping wind

to lop them from their earthly neck

and send them rolling like poor Antoinette

down ghost town roads.

 

The fruit stands are closed.

 

The corn walls were hauled off

like a set change

ready for the second act. 

The barren fields, 

harvest’s yield,

already nestled into cellar beds;

jars of toil for mouths unfed.

 

But here am I

in Indian summer oblivion

soaking the last blobs of color

from valley horizons,

meditating in the last throes

of a spent landscape

before full resignation.