The Most Exciting Thing I Can Imagine…

The most exciting thing I can imagine is a train accelerating,

slowly picking up speed leaving a small town in western Kansas,

climbing like a song through the chord changes.

In a cloud of hopping fleas we’re getting out of there…

passing by the old water tower, the feed and grange.

Westbound, pulling a grade through piney woods

and spitting out the boxcar doors,

chugging towards a dark, mile long tunnel, with

cinders in our eyes, the deafening roar of wind and steam.

Who needs fine clothes or shoes when we wear the wind and feel the sun,

and our bodies vibrate with the jarring rumble

of rough wood boxcars filled with grain and timber?

Who needs money when our eyes fill with the vacant glory of horizons…

Leaving cheap motels surrounding cracked asphalt,

leaving the ratty backyards, leaving off baking in the hot sun and

heading towards the luminous robin’s egg blue blending into pale yellows and grays.

                                                                         –  by Carl Nelson