Stretching beyond

the river beneath,

is a rusting hulk of a trestle

that once proudly bore

the immense, the mighty

locomotives of iron…

With their belching black smoke,

and their sharp piercing screams,

they pulled box cars along

narrow skeletal tracks

which was all that had kept

the tonnage of train

from the craggy abyss below.

Proud evidence of

a time long ago

when railroads began to move west.

They tore impractical paths

through byzantine wood,

rigid foothills of rock,

and erected steel hands

to bridge raging streams.

Now lonely, futile,

the crumbling trestle

no longer sees

locomotives of iron,

with belching black smoke.

But if we will give pause,

it is possible to hear

the horsepower quicken,

as the ground starts to quake,

while the echoes of ghosts rumble by.

Michelle Close Mills ©