Rail Fanning In Kansas
1.
We saw two orange engines—mirrored in rain puddles—
after waiting three hours in Ark City in a black SUV.
2.
We sat in folding chairs on what’s now a footbridge.
Several types of flowers—more plentiful than trains.
Purple, orange and white grew in the widening
pavement cracks. One train passed safely below us,
near the city water tower in Melvern.
3.
After a brief delay in Ottawa, we drove to
a favorite rail fanning spot. We had been to Paola
before to sit in the minimal shade of a cedar
on the western edge of the well-kept graveyard,
behind which the UP and BNSF lines cross
through the junction that had been replaced, so that it
flexed less than the last time we visited. We noticed
most of the trains now had pusher engines, including
the one coal train—traveling east—loaded with low-sulphur
coal, pit-mined in the awesome valley of the Powder River.
HELEN LOSSE is the author of Better With Friends (Rank Stranger Press, 2009) and two poetry chapbooks, Gathering the Broken Pieces, available from FootHills Publishing, and Paper Snowflakes, published by Southern Hum Press, and the Poetry Editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. She has recent poetry publications or acceptances in Blue Fifth Review, Main Street Rag, The Wild Goose Poetry Review, Hobble Creek Review, and Iodine Poetry Review. She blogs at http://helenl.wordpress.com/
