The Train

"a swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see - that's my idea of happiness"
- Portrait of a Lady

I have to admit there's a certain beauty in Oklahoma.
The sun setting over the bush-tree hills that crest the creeks
and red-dirt gullies remind me so much of my childhood visits
to this state. The train takes us through wilderness, and I
feel closer to nature this way, as if the hills and trees had just
only moments ago parted expressly to let us wedge ourselves
through, only to close again once we have passed. Cows dot the fields,
still green under the golden sky as the sun sinks lower and warms the horizon
like buttered toast. The train's whistle blows, a sign that we're passing
civilization, and all heads look out at tiny towns, and suburbs,
gone as quickly as they there in the frame of each window.
The sun seems to warm the moisture in the air, and the fields
in the distance appear to steam like a Roman bath, reminding me
of the Smoky mountains behind a home my grandparents used to live.
Rolls of hay and grass stand like statues on the checkerboards of
shaved landscape. A car. A tractor. And rows of these round,
yellow sentinels - sometimes the surrounding fields look like
a green carpet, with hardly any texture of grass.
The train jostles us along, and my pen is often unsteady,
adding to the timeless feeling of grinding through the wilderness
for the first time, ignoring the signs of established life, and
the technology beneath and before me, to think myself a pioneer
out to investigate new lands and frontiers, to capture that horizon
and chase that glowing orb across the other end of those fields,
behind those trees. I fancy we might stop, and all of us
get out into some open field, and dance together under lamplight,
picnicing in the cooling, wet grass, amidst the orange and black
shadows of twilight. I wave at the setting sun's last goodbyes, and
wave at the tiny people as we pass.
I adore the train.

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