Final Stop

^{Trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.
—Herman Hesse}

When the railroad first came to the edge of the mountain, 
men in buckskin breeches called it the “gravity road.” 
They pounded on solid rock from dawn to dusk, dangled 
off cliff faces in woven reed baskets to drive steel spikes 
into stone with a primal, accentual, hand-hammered beat. 

When the railroad first arrived at the sedge edge of prairie, 
bison were picked off from their herds, sometimes to cure 
into hams, skin for coats, or cull for bones to ship east 
and market as fertilizer, glue, plates or umbrellas handles; 
other times, they were shot just to rot where they dropped. 

When the railroad first built a station on the city outskirts, 
families gathered on hillsides to watch black smoke plume, 
hitched horses and abandoned stagecoaches to whisper 
about “Pullman Palace Cars” with velvet seats, brass rails, 
gas lights, knuckle couplers, air brakes: five stars for a fee. 

When the railroad first threatened the forest’s tree line, 
shackled men with skin dark as bark and forced to work 
in quarries and mines began to hack at stumps in hummus 
with shovels. They left their lives in leaf fall and the roots 
regenerated. Unlike us, forests grow slow, in no time zone. 

When the railroad first swam into the camera’s viewfinder, 
no train had used its timber ties for a span only the rings 
of a tree might tell (but won’t). Listen closely to the trunk:  
when our hurtling headlong is blocked, we need to change 
not just direction but dimension. Decelerate. Look up.