Express? NaPoWriMo: Day 13

There it is,

Ticking, temporarily settled;

Longer than the platform.

Beckoning, sighing, impatient

To be flying the rails again:

Locomotive to the right,

Atop the bridge:

The home of the power,

The place all motion begins

(The capital, driving, letter

In a back-to-front sentence).

The coaches line up,

And there is the calaboose.

Me? I am reflected in

Carriage windows;

Surprised because

I was beginning to think

I’d missed all of these chances,

Journeys, risks…

.. and reflections work two ways,

So, as she steams onwards, outwards,

Am I on the seat, leaving,

Looking at the platform?

Or on the platform,

Left behind, doubting

Again?

Closer to Ecstasy

There’s a dark, deep powerful thread

Running around us now, these

Fifty wild, unloaded ghost-white mustangs,

Manes streaming like tense autumn lightnings

As they stretch their necks and head-down charge

Up the scree-walled slopes to the place

Where the beautiful god-of-all-storms

Presses spells into the lavender-bruise sky

With an axe and a battle-hearted melody.

And I’m full of electric jolts and sparkle,

Riding a box-car built of grey-knot timber and phantom iron,

Sharing the line with a rock-heavy locomotive

That follows a hole drilled in the solid wall of blackness

By the Cyclops-eyed lantern strung from the cow-catcher sweep.

With a heavy, chain muscled hand the fire-box silhouetted driver

Pulls the cord that will set the moon’s-hell bells ringing:

Darkness is coming and I couldn’t be closer to ecstasy.