The Iron Horse has Wings

Satori Katsu in memory of Robert Allen Meyer




1.


The road ends in a circle. 
You feel its gravity, gain
speed over the arc.


Release, if you're lucky,
sends you home.  Through a field
of yellow flowers.
  

 

2.


Rape presses.  Seed
oil.  Lamps burning
long.  Engines of industry
sputter.


The next train will drive into the plain
like an embroiderer's needle.  Its design
can be seen off the tip of our wing.



 

3.


Why is it you defy gravity?
Can't you see it will pull you down
like a star?  Leaving a crater,


Earth will be forever 
smoothing over.



 

4.


Flight was the stupidest thing I've ever attempted.
I kept returning
like rain to the rivers of the Pacific Northwest


while you sewed the fields
with seed crops.  Pressed
to light my way.



 

5.


In the penultimate car, a passenger
throws down a window.  Waves.  Like
a wing.  Like a ripple.  As if 


he's soldiering the fields.  Repeating. 
Remember me.
I am one of your conquered cities.

 

Note:

"Lightning's blue glare fills Oklahoma plains, the train rolls east casting yellow shadow on grass. Twenty years ago approaching Texas, I saw sheet lightning cover Heaven's corners ...  An old man catching fireflies on the porch at night watched the Herd Boy cross the Milky Way to meet the Weaving Girl... How can we war against that?"

    ̶  Allen Ginsberg.  "Iron Horse"  (1972)