A Train But Sensed, A Hat Forlorn

This is a response to the Imagà Imaginings prompt by Michael Stalcup, Image Prompt #6 from round 2 of the challenge

For each in life

A horrible instant

A knowing realization

A pause that fills eternity

And the ghost train comes

Unmarred, the endless horizon reaches

Hawk soars eyeing the distant line

between earth and sky

oblivious to the little lives below

Made to feel big in limitless space

By cattle filled swaths

Kicking up dust storms

The thunderous fells

Of Thor’s hammer

Hoof and beat

Passing as if entitled to trample

any standing carelessly by

They run rail parallel

trying to outrace

the ghost train

But now there’s only memory

Of herds and herdsman

Glowing soft in setting sun

And firelight

Stiffened joints and tattered muscles protested

and still they rode

Til the day came, and with it the train

Relieved to lay it all down

With a sigh they climbed aboard

Their spirits fled

Across a western sky

The eagle paid homage

The hawk showed the way

Only those cracked wide open

can detect the train

sensing eternity

With its approach

To rush silently alongside

As if in curiosity

Waiting for this new breed of

City folks to come due

But for now it is just a holiday

To breath the country air

Wanting to believe in their ruggedness

for an hour, perhaps two

Mugging for photo ops to text

To lovers luckless to remain behind

They sense not what runs near beside

For it is not their time

To join the ride

The tracks once iron

Invisible now

just thickened clay

It sucks at boots

Bought in fashion outlets

Form and appearance everything

Speaks not to authenticity

It’s the thought of becoming

For but a day, no longer

A caricature from ages gone

By at least a million years or more

The western age the same as

the days of dinosaurs

To millennials with more interest

in being noticed that noticing

the cold beauty of history

stark and culled from salty brine

Too self absorbed to know or care

Of folk songs sung in firelight

The camaraderie of men

Easing chaps from chapped legs

Muscle spasms a norm of day

Calloused hands clutching

Dinged, dented, thin tin plate

an all occasion travel spork

Bent and twisted as mesquite

bowed double in timeless winds

Vacationers they notice not

and pass the weathered, faded hat

which floats in waters choked with weeds

without more than a single glance

See not the hand that reaches

For that which floats alone and worn

Uncomfortable and vulnerable

the separation jars his need

Lest one turns then to grasp the crown

to fish it out and put it on

To touch or take a cowboys hat

Is to fight the Mississippi back

The remnant of a life well lived

In sweat stained felt with band of suede

In a day and forever

In the time in between

Beyond

Translucent worthwhile destiny

To flow endlessly forward

The ghost train ventures on

A traveling berth

With allotted place

For each who comes

But another day for these

Is reckoned

to pay their two coin passage

And so the cowboy mounts again

Mournfully to ride alone

His hat abandoned back behind

To float in a world long since moved on

Natalie Frank (Taye Carrol) has had work featured in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press and Zero Fiction among others. Her poetry has been featured a several anthologies. She is the Managing Editor for Novellas and Serials at LVP Publications.

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