The CSX Circles the Carolina Cove At Midnight

Joyce Compton Brown

It rumbles in the dark
like a deep bass note                
pitched beneath coyote’s
tenor yelp, as it has
for a hundred years,
from West Virginia coal mines
through the valley. It snakes
down Linville Mountain
toward factories long dead,
past depots boarded up,
converted to tourist sites.

It passes plants where mysteries
are made, where trucks wait
to carry the load.
Slides on down to
Piedmont towns where
empty buildings loom
rust-red in the night.
Dead cotton mills
and furniture plants squat
near boarded company stores.
It rolls down to the flatlands
to a few coal plants
still churning out some power
before the final shutdown.
Moves on down to port towns
carrying oil in tank cars
for big ships to carry
on to foreign ports.

At journeys end cargo cars sit
in great tracked lots, waiting,
where kids write their songs
of  I am here  with spray paints
and bold words, indecipherable
to men rambling by, in language
no clearer than the coyote’s yap,
ignored as commonplace,
the jibberings of the young,
irrelevant to the journey.

Joyce Compton Brown has published in such journals as 'Main St. Rag', 'Kakalak', 'Still', and 'Flying South'. She studied poetry at Hindman Institute and Wildacres and has won several honors in art and poetry journals. Having taught English at Gardner-Webb University, she now concentrates on poetry, art, and roots music. She plays banjo, explores old music, and was keynote speaker at the American Gravestone Association Conference, 2019. Her chapbooks are 'Bequest' (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and 'Singing with Jarred Edges' (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2018).