In my gut I am a train with gears 
that roar. I rush away from petty noise.

I growl into night so ashen, paper floats
pressing soot upon a face to tinker 

with a sleeper. I glide by houses too old,
the builders barely knew of trains.

And underneath, on rusty song-lines crossing, 
singing latitude and longitude, measuring each lot

in smoots or other metrics one might fathom 

I know:

Underneath, and underneath, and underneath

I clutch the land that I am stitched to. 
The railway ties together.

Trains sing to the astonished dirt:
We are made of metal, we conduct the crust of earth

 

~~~

Shana Hill is a member of the Poemworks Collective of Boston. Her work recently appeared in Slipstream Magazine. She currently runs a business assisting writers in the publication process.