Train ride was impossible
acres of dry stream bed along
a distance of single gauge steel
down to Pima Bajo, lowland pitch
pine, Tabascan trade route, fields
of burned corn and shacks. Smoke
pours from inner turbines below
vaulted sleep ceilings, oil-lamp
stains of prairie kaolin, bumping
flames with our push through night
slow pull of metal on wood on sand.
Any window frames the story, clips
of boxed in life – yards and homes
and goats, each with a week of tales,
traveling, still traveling, and into a
long steel bend of a hard low-right
swing, one by one our coaches coil
south toward Copper Canyon, Rio Tinto,
Tepehuan – and a month without rain.
