AMTRAK
 

Find the time ...
                take the time ...

meet some people on the move:

                young couples with their babies in the night,
                students on a summer tour,
                the elderly retired and out to take the trip
                        they never took before.

All Aboard ...
        The Pioneer, The Empire Builder, The Desert Wind.

Above the wheels that clack
across the miles,
we walk the aisles
            finding the balance
            feeling the lurch.

The land slips away
            sense-surround
                in cinemascope
whole scenes pierce the eyes
            disappear among the lobes ...
                    travel down the synapses of mind.

Entrained, we follow ancient trails
            across the wind-swept flats
                    through the sandy hills,
over mountains high and low
            up the rivers as they flow
                    upon the sliding earth.

Rocks and trees
dust and stone and bone
depositions made in time ...

            this eroded structure in us all.

Sneaking into cities in the night:
shaky neighborhoods, abandoned shacks
grafitti on the warehouse walls.

For everyone
the Mississippi looms until it's crossed.

West along the Platte ...

after Denver in the early morning
we scale the Rockies' eastern face
then wind down the day among the rust-
        red canyons of the Colorado.

Grand Lake, Grand Mesa, Grand Junction.

Rising with the sun, changing time
momentarily getting off ... then on again
slowing up and speeding down the line
changing tracks ...
            always heading west.

Red Buttes, Canyonlands, Book Cliffs, Green River.

Shale, sandstone
            in the distance ... snowy peaks ...
frail aspen leaves
            waiting to turn gold
                    before they die ...
everywhere the pines.

Near Winnemucca,
                as we traverse the vastness
                of scorched alkali,

a lady with a weatherbeaten face
                (and a beer in hand)
turns to me and says:

                "I wouldn't want to hang around HERE!

                           Would you?"

Always on the move ...

        will we ever find
                the way?
 

                                                                   © Anthony Hunt

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