Consider

(the 1950s)

1.

Consider a train, passing fields and farms;
silos, barns, Holsteins and lowing tractors,
corduroyed farmers sweating in the bright day,

dust rising from the earth like the ribbed drone
of flies purling green in the primeval daylight.
Consider the sonorous horn of this hematic

streak weeping brightly as it speeds on, straight
as the arrow in its headlong tumble, rumbling
laughingly as it sifts the dappled greens and

browns of that spare landscape, tempering the
endless acreage provisioning the nation—that
flat, felt land sprawling alike the singing coastal

cities so relentless and intractable, curmudgeon-
ly and close-fisted, devouring their children in
the tens of thousands with the gawping mouths

of their Mohammedan skyscrapers lowering and
wind-blown, piercing and lighting up the vast
electric night in ensemble. Consider this myria-

pod existence of steel and ossified will thunder-
ing by on two slate-silver ribbons running paral-
lel for countless miles, lacing the vast Midwest,

stitching up the endless column of ties and oc-
casional grade crossings like hemp boot-laces,
stringing the fields together with gravel and

barbed wire, signage, burrs and tall grasses.
Consider how this train plies its route with a
hale abandon, calling its rhythmic lightning up

from the earth, up from the rocks and the dirt
and flocks of mourning doves calling out in the
redbuds and maples toward the enormous light.

2.

This train may crash. I tell it to you now: this
vagrant smear of maroon and vital orange that
rends the fields with searing, luminous fire as it

hurtles incandescently over the grassy-knolled,
grain-bleeding, cornrowed Shield toward its
terminus in sprawling, smoking civilization—

the Twin Cities, with their endless depots and
boxcars and freight yards and shunters all toil-
ing away from sunup till sundown; with their

murky tenements and lucent towers, shopfronts
and movie-houses, dances halls and all the rest—
may meet its fragrant, instant destruction on a

bad section of track or a turn rushed into, top-
pling car by car: crashing, careening, jerking,
jittering, jackknifing, compacting, and collapsing

in on itself like an accordion in subsidence, steel
walls crumpling and windows shattering, roofs
peeling open like sardine tins, men and women

in blue, brown, and grey suits thrown about like
ragdolls in total confusion, landing broken and
haphazard to be crushed by overturned settees,

or ripped to shreds by the wheels and steel gird-
ers, blood spilling out of mangled bodies to douse
the sparking flames lapping greedily at their char-

ring limbs, their faces frozen in silent cries of
agony or mortal terror, their eyes blank and milk-
white, rolled back into their fractured skulls,

and the many passengers aboard, embarking at
innumerable stations, may, unknowing, be spend-
ing their final breaths in the upcoming moments.

3.

Consider this slick culebra sidewinding its way
across the vast Prairielands at the heart of this
continent, this orange, black-backed serpent

braiding its way through the empty Shieldland
toward the far, Western mountain ranges so
indomitable, snow-capped and sky-scraping,

vertiginous holy schist and gneiss thrusting their
gnarled rug-folds into the blue mountain air, hog-
backed and glaciated with Methuselan water.

Consider this train, a city on wheels: coaches and
dome cars, taverns and diners, sleepers, the mo-
bile post office. Consider the inside of the obser-

vation car, strikingly modern and strewn with
amenities: Plush reclining seats and couches,
panoramic windows, lamps and indirect lighting.

Softest touches. Crisp, clean lines throughout,
wood veneer and polished metal. Stylish, canny
understatement. And air-conditioned, the 20th

Century's saving grace of all graces. Consider
its construction, steel trusses and plate glass
in a gyroscopic half-bullet-head, an arch geo-

metric prism 27-faceted, surrounding idle men
and women in pressed suits. A bird-cage of
light enshrouding in an elongated glass dome,

swimming in the rays of blue afternoon sun.
How shall this fabricated luxury hold its own, if
the onslaught of Nature should present itself?

4.

Consider the Atom Bomb, which was dropped
on Hiroshima by a bomber baptized after the
pilot's mother; which killed over 60,000 people

instantly, vaporizing them into atomic particles
that stained the stone steps and roads of the
city, and crafted a crater over two miles wide,

destroying buildings with fanatical passion, pul-
verizing stone, concrete, wood, and tile through
heat and shockwave blast; which continued to

kill Hiroshima's citizens by the thousands in the
days and weeks that followed, through radiation
sickness, burns, and malnutrition, bringing the

total death toll to 146,000; which happened also
in Nagasaki three days later with a death toll of
80,000 souls, a lesser number due to the moun-

tainous terrain of the locale redirecting the blast-
waves of the second Bomb; and some top gener-
als in the war who were against the use of these

bombs, who preferred to continue using con-
ventional incendiaries to carpet-bomb as they
had above Tokyo, and President Truman who

ordered they be used; and the young pilots who
likewise were uncertain of their duty's moral
standing in dropping bombs of such unbridled

brutality on innocent civilians who had little to
do with Imperial Nippon's military machine
beyond those conscripted laborers in factories;

and the new world also which spawned on that
day, August 6, 1945, a world of great and terrible
machines which the World's Powers hurried to

stockpile in an ever-escalating arms race which
we now find ourselves confronting; which hangs
over our heads a wanton sword that casts our

faces in sickly pall with cadaverous refracted sun-
light, our eyes sunken, our hands bony and grasp-
ing at shreds of blind hope in this uncertain Age—

5.

Consider the engineer and the conductor in the
cab of the locomotive, as it streaks across vast,
thicketed Montana, en route from Chicago—with

its dockyards and freighters and ore-loaders all
toiling and laboring dustily away, with its spider-
web of train stations and rail lines connecting

our nation's farthest points together, a vast and
ever-complicating machine—toward Spokane
and Seattle on the Pacific coast, hauling its frail

cargo of ordinary human lives in sveltest finery,
its interior stylings the crème of our postwar
modernité. It is their job to make sure that their

train leaves safely and arrives safely, never
encountering a disruption or delay. What if,
through negligence or illness, they might fail

in their duty, and thus through their onus their
train come to grief? If so, the men and women
aboard this lightning flyer, in their elegant trav-

eling clothes, mothers watching over sons and
daughters, fathers reading the daily paper or
talking politics with their fellow men, economy

passengers in their reclining chairs, spendthrifts
in their private rooms, honeymooners in the
Super Dome taking photos of the passing land-

scapes, all of their lives would be forfeit! 150
souls injured or extinguished in a burning wreck
of twisted metal cockle-shells piled ignominious

on some Alpine rail line, blocking traffic in and
out of the pass where they met their end. What,
if such a fate befall these innocent travelers!

6.

Consider this wry, fitful, intransigent world in
which we find ourselves now inhabiting, which
demands our servitude and utmost compliance

in the new ways of living running rampant, pug-
nacious, impersonal and impervious to all as-
sault now, restructuring our lives into modes

cold and strange, where at this very moment
Hollywood is making blockbusters in sunny Italy
borne on the backs of her poor Southern farm-

ers, and Hollywood is flying her stars into Rome
to appear in these Spaghetti-films and crass tab-
loid papers cropping up, staffed by ungovern-

able photographers and reporters, and Elvis
is gyrating his hips to the youth-shod trill of a
million prepubescent girls, and Rome's beauti-

ful liners are sinking in Nantucket's waters, and
the Iron Curtain has come down with a bang,
and airplanes are the finest new way to travel,

no longer the means of California's elite, and
what's a few crashes to douse public opinion?
The new Comet's flaws are merely contrition.

America is searching within the atom for Peace,
and seeking to emphasize her right to the sky,
stockpiling her nuclear marvels, singing her

war-cry, hawking her blue jeans for the whole
world to buy, and cities are putting fluoride in
their water supply, town taps burnishing teeth

pearly-white, and Senator McCarthy has the
whole of the nation seeing Reds in their stock-
ings, and Allen Ginsberg is hawking his scurri-

lous poetry, and supermarkets are proliferating,
supplanting the grocers, and America will admit
to no wrongdoing in dropping the Bomb, and

the Marshall Plan is siring economic Miracles,
and everyone wants their plastic flamingoes, as
America and Russia wage proxy wars across

Eurasia, bombarding their vassals, and merry
the Devil who tends the flame-flowers of evil,
and Kaliningrad is in ruins, and so too is Poland,

and Russia has outlawed jazz yet again, and
every man fancies himself a poet, and the whole
world is sliding into intractable panic, children

huddling under desks and fearing the sirens an-
nouncing the imminent bombs overhead spiral-
ing, alike a clumsy old albatross careening onto

the deck of a sultry destroyer hove to and bran-
dished in territorial disputes—How does one
keep hope in this godless new age? How can't

one madden at the news overflowing in these
rank, algal days from our many newspapers?
And what can be done if one drops the bomb

on the heads of those riding this automaton stri-
ation, as it cascades volubly over her tempered
steel ribbons? What if this this train should yet

wreck? What then? Who shall mourn these inno-
cents caught in the crosshairs of Fate's ready rifle-
men aiming so deadly at the forefront of history?

Coda.

The train does not crash. The engineer and con-
ductors attend to their duties, and no harm bursts
in the air above. All is well on this autumn day.



---Published by Creation Magazine, Issue #6, August 2024
---Note: The train described is the Milwaukee Road's Olympian Hiawatha.
---Posted here 10/11/2024