Truth’s Power

At first, it was only a hush,

like a rail line breathing before dawn,
a faint tremor under our shoes
as we stepped onto that place

everyone claims to know,

Mainstreet America...

Where handshake deals sit
on porches like old dogs,
where guilt is to be polished shiny
and innocence is ground into gravel
beneath courtroom benches.

Life’s engine…

Coughs every morning,
steam whispering from its seams,
and we thought it nothing more
than a sunrise settling into place.

Living introduced…

Life’s low‑Burn furnace,

then the firebox warming with
a slow, orange hunger illuminating
the underbelly of a schoolroom
short on everything
except expectation:

lined paper thin as onion skin,
pencils gnawed to splinters,
crayons broken like brittle bones,
chalk worn to ghostly nubs,
dust that clung to us
like a prophecy.

While far above, behind office doors
too thick for truth to penetrate,
administrators stacked dollars
the way coalmen stack fuel,
laughing as the furnace of lack
fed the boiler of their comfort.

The engine hissed again.

Pressure rising.

Something in us began to heat.

Adolescence...

Came…
like wheels catching their first spin,
awkward, eager,
iron just discovering momentum.

Ahead…

First job,

a single piston firing.
First date,
a second cylinder catching rhythm.
First car,
steel embracing speed.
First seduction,
steam vaulting skyward
with a whistle sharp enough
to slice the night.

Tracks beneath us hummed.
The locomotive,
our locomotive,
leaned into its own awakening.

A glittering acceleration…

Beckoned the shimmering years,
when the rails gleamed
like a promise we could almost swallow.

Brooks Brothers suits,
fabric tailored as precisely
as rivets hammered into a boiler wall
replaced the department‑store versions,
threaded with dreams instead of status.

Two‑martini lunches…

Became the new throttle,
each sip a coal shovel’s worth
stoking the fire,
overpowering the memory
of Big Macs and warm Cokes
from yesterday’s smaller stations.

The engine was racing now…

Grease. Heat. Pride.
Velocity disguised as success.

We joined them…

With our high-speed illusion,

home became altitude.
Drivers opening doors
like a stationmaster bowing to royalty.
Doormen greeted us
as if our names were forged
into the metal of the universe.

Up we rose…

Our gilded elevator ascending

into the ribs of a giant engine,

elevators lifting us into rarified air
like a rocket in slow motion toward glass chambers
where marble floors shone with a purity we mistook
for arrival.

Where echoes replaced the truth,

and mirrors multiplied our shadows

into a choir of self-worship.

Inside our twenty‑four‑hour
climate-controlled sanctuary,
where the world became a reflection:
our voices bounced off glass,
our shadows lengthened by wealth,
our images repeated endlessly
like mirrors arranged
around a flame.

But fire…

Expands.
Pressure mounts.
Steel has limits.
Even illusions will buckle

when the speed becomes truth,

allowing something to shift.

Looking out…

Windows framed the world
like a camera trying to keep focus.

Looking skyward…

Eyes searched for a sun
that would not blind.

Looking down…

Thirty‑eight floors below

were everyday shadows moving
systematically like the sleepers and ballast
that kept a train upright,
steadfast, unseen,
bearing the weight
of our ascent.

Yes…

The ones at street level were keeping
this platinum‑skinned locomotive
from derailing into myth.

And still the boiler groaned.
Steam screamed.
From the engine’s armor

light poured through the cracks

with the ferocity of a star being born,

not as punishment,

not as revelation,

but as a single molen feather

falling from above, white-hot,

weightless,

landing in our open palms.

Such overwhelming light...

Flooded us,

too bright to name,
too honest to beam away,

too persuasive to be ignored.

Yet…