Three Ghost Trains at Niobrara

Jeff Burt

 

/
I have had too much grace.
Common wisdom says it cannot be so,
but I have had too much luck,
                     just too much of too much. 

I am like a clay side to a mountain
saturated by rain:  I slip then slide,
                     changing good boundaries. 

I am like a river that has leapt its banks
and gone to ruin orchards of friendships,
                     pastures of providence, valleys of love. 

I am like a spur of a train track rusting
under bird-less skies that ends in field of wild grass,
                     abandoned boxcars, spikes.

 

//
Workmanlike. Lower Missouri, river of commerce,
pack mule, wide and polluted, flat, churning below,
                     ever churning. 

Downstream the channels deepen, pace quickens,
the wild and rampant dominates beneath
                               yet never breaks into rapids. 

I respect no levee, rise to overcome impedance,
stem the flow of contributories,
                     make loved ones back away. 

Like the trestle that no one sees and thinks train,
I am graffiti, a spot for dispossessing,
                     in search of missing steam. 

                                      

///

I went down to the river near sunset.  One heron
split the sky and the last I saw of it
                     was blurred shadow in still backwater. 

I went down to the river because it was late
because the trestle was close and the train would go by,
                               and the smoke would wrestle white 

and black and seem almost cheerful.
I went down to the river looking for the scented word,
                               the petals of apology, of praise, 

for the shape of a common dialect, but a single twig dangled
in the water and drew me off into storms.  When I left the river
                               I passed the bridge but did not cross. 

I took the train tracks in the twilight and stumbled
toward home and as I passed the last house saw my self
                               in the dark window of ignorance.

 

 

                                        

 

Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife amid the redwoods and two-lane roads wide enough for one car. He grew up in Wisconsin, Texas, and Nebraska, and the landscape of the American Midwest still populates his vision.. He has work in Rabid Oak, Red Wolf Journal, Williwaw Journal, and Heartwood. He was the featured 2015 summer issue poet of Clerestory, and won the 2017 Cold Mountain Review narrative poetry prize.