2 am train.

Inspection time—the carriages, the caboose—the boxcars waiting in this night vestibule. The nocturnal watchman down in the gravel, surveying shapes that shift in locomotion. His steel-toe boots that still smell of manufactured rubber. With no pocket watch, no tin lantern—he’s the adaptive species—a modern day mole man.

Oily joints and tanks and heavy machinery—this one’s pointed toward Canada, for native quartz and forests of wood—100 years in the making—too-early-of-progression is a fool’s game. There are derelict painters in every town, but this marker's factory-made—stenciled like a P.O.W.

2am: I drive the low bend slow, after the bars close, and the shipyard’s nothing but fog and cranes. Twin lights shine for the tail that’s getting left behind—shed and realigned, in this holding station for unwanted compartments.

 

Some things are that much more beautiful in perpetual motion—but not me. I dream of being stranded in some nowhere town I don’t know the name of, that I can't ever leave. Containment is what I really need.

But when I’m laying here in bed, and that distant whistle blows—the industrial owl gaining momentum beneath the overpass of the freeway—that steamy specter of departure—I pretend I’m sending this train your way, to set up our own secret trade route, to travel back and forth in time, like some stories about Grapes and Wrath.