~HEIDI CZERWIEC~

REVERSE RAILROAD

---

 
 
Black and sinuous as a bullwhip,
from the North backwards rolls the train,
driving its cache of placid fares
on one-way silent journeys, back to homes
no longer prisons.  Oh, the black loam
is fine for workin' in, but a body disdains
any clay save that from which it sprung.

In their boxes, unawares,
they race past kudzu-shrouded trees still hung
with strange fruit.  It is a stranger trip
than that which forced them, living, underground
—this other railroad, topside and Southbound.

 
 

© by Heidi Czerwiec