2 rails, parrallel, leading off into the curvature of the Earth, vegetation blurred, not ascending , not descending, straight line to nowhere.  It clears my mind to walk the tracks.   Metal and wood, rocks.  Still morning, smell of coffee, fog muffling the distant call, dew on the paned window, slight breeze billowing lace curtains.  Light diffuse, the sun has not yet risen in corn country Illinois.  I am young and still I stop to savor sight sound smell touch of the moment, my ears ache as they reach in vain to hear the last tendrils of the old mans song down the tracks.  Now the air is heavy, rain clouds in the distance, I stop beside parrallel metal lines running.  This is the rail the old man's singing down the wooden plank road of morn my ear ached for.  The metal gleams in the sunlight, I don't kick rocks, thrown off pieces, bolt, track ties, rusted amber reddish brown, flat top, heavy, pointed end a rail tie a prize, shiny.  Pennies?  I don't have any in my pocket.  The old trains go to the bone yard.  Only the most proper and pristine presented steaming for the audience to fathom ages old time the old man the steamer marveling shovelfulls of coal.  I can see him and not in celluloid, the coal shoveler laboring , tending the fire , sweat coursing tendrils of skin through soot caked black.  he is a man of thick muscles, slow movement at hearth and home.  The wood stove banked according to his loves want of warmth, slow to anger is he, just settled within by the slow steady rhythm of shovel to fire, scrape scrape bank.  He throws his anger in tenderly he tends the flame of Hell for only the coalman knows how a woman boils water.  He yearns for days of youth and comradery, the wind in the trees, a flower tucked behind her hair.