7pm – October 21, 2024 A coal train clacks and rumbles by. There is a break in the track And the wheels sound Like a drummers patter. Ratta-tat-tat Ratta-tat-tat Ratta-tat-tat Ratta-tat-tat This is a long one. 200 cars at least. All of this coal, How many centuries Or millennia did it take? Ratta-tat-tat And here is it Scraped from a mine in the east And shipped across a continent In days numbering few. Where are you going? Ratta-tat-tat An electric plant south of here? Certainly not to fill stockings Or warm homes. What do they do When the plant calls and The answer is, ‘Sorry, we’re all out of coal.’? Ratta-tat-tat Do tvs and dishwashers Suddenly become paperweights? Ratta-tat-tat Will all those love songs No long inspire Expressions of passion? Will they only be written By daylight? By candlelight? Who will read in the dark, When passions are most Readily needed? Ratta-tat-tat At least painters will Suddenly have a place again. Only their pigments will Be berries and mud. 7am – October 22, 2024 This morning The train is now Far away. I can hear the whistle Through the darkness Howling its lone call. Not to gather, But to warn. It warns us all at how Modernity drives us apart Creating social barriers Through the constructs Of Technology. 3pm – October 25, 2024 Over the midday din Which includes the nearby Hammers of a roofing crew And some kind of excavator Two blocks from here I can hear the train still. It is only a rumble now. Like an undertow of sound Pulling my thoughts to what kind of cargo it must me moving. Is it still coal? Or oil? Perhaps grain, or corn. When last I saw that track It was a half-mile of war machines. Hummers and tanks and trucks. Containers full of something Designed to take life As efficiently as possible. Eliminating designated enemies While turning a tidy profit for everyone upstream. Ah, the wheels of industry. That is the sound the Train makes. Only most of the west can’t hear What it physically sounds like When those wheels do their business. That is a privilege for working class neighborhoods And of course, For those downrange.
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