Roundhouse rafters, the wind!

Roundhouse rafters…the wind!

At the end of steam age tracks

Roundhouse shapes loom forgotten in repose,

Filling the gloom with recollective memories

Of great iron-wheeled beasts, once full

Of mechanical snarl and protest, now

Rusting quietly away amidst Wyoming emptiness.

So much wind!

Long past October’s prophecies of dormancy,

The ranks of lone survivors wait,

Unmoved by each massive Wintry gust.

Evoking memories of the fiery heart

Of each engine there, now stilled forever,

Boilers cold as the frigid air the land

So impartially shares with man, beast

And machine.

Endless wind!

Contrails overhead, high up

In the ascending crystalline blue vastness,

Bespeak humankind’s faithlessness

With the very spawn of its inventive madness,

While down below, squat those misbegotten

Relics, miserably bound forever to the sad

Earth With chains of neglectful disregard,

Like the toys of children forever grown,

And tossed into some giant’s forgotten garden,

Rusting away into their elements

Under roundhouse rafters.

With only the keening wind

to mourn their passing.