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Do the trains still run here?
Has the engine steam settled
In the ditches along the tracks?

Can you feel the distant rumble
If your ear is pressed against the rail?
a rhythmic rap, a tap-tap, tap-tap?

Have you heard the hollow whistle holler?
Through the metal of a train
warning fields of farmer's grain?

Can you stand on timber ties
Between steel lines that converge
on far away horizons,
while you
like an arrow in a bow
stretch tight the rails from head to toe,
and think, am I a timber tie?

Upon these rails of time
do I part the present?
that future and past may intertwine?

Or is the past so far behind?
the future so unseen,
that where you stand is all you know?

Did the steam settle long ago?

So that your dreams as iron spikes,
Driven deep through earth and wood
Have taken root right here and now

That nothing more will grow.

Do the Trains still run here?

Learn more about this author, Madlando Aver.
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