Feeling like a freight on a siding,
   Engine pitting with rust,
      Partially burned;
   A self-consumed coal burning Shay
      Log train.
      The summer excursion runs up a hill
           Or two or three
      Takes a couple switchbacks
      --- Uphill U-turns;
      Runs back down,
           Same track,
           Same time,
           Same year of death.
      Past a town called Spruce,
         Population three hundred,
         All ghosts --- dead and invisible,
      Washed clean as the forest after rain,
         Washed clean as every building
                            disappeared:
      Hardly a clearing left in the forest,
      Overgrown.
   Lost ghosts seek vainly for old homes:
      The forest covers as a thick warm
      Blanket of the fluffiest snow.
Down past a rusty engineless engine:
   Burnt-up coal-burning Shay,
   Cooled and rusting in the rain
      Of a late August day,
   Waiting for sunset,
   Waiting for ghosts.

12/29/77

Appeared in Hill & Valley, vol. 6, no. 4, October 1983

Index    Coal Tipples, 1962