Through spotted, sullid window glass
Through fleeting boxcar after car
Immersed in stony faded sun
Weatherworn telephone poles
     All peeling, limp, forgotten
     Ever more content to rotting

Trodden fences, feeble boundaries
Hills' horizon close around
Windless hang the grasses now
Stillness, only, rounds the bales
     No greater cause than seeing
     Little needed there but being

This passing screams an aberration--
The steel beneath has settled home
The streaking shadow even so
And yet the inner world defies
     Defined in isolation
     Neglecting outer desolation

50 miles an hour Montana
Stubbled fields and foothills spread
So many blips between boxcars
Now another lonely station
     Shut in once again we pass
     Still silent under spotted glass


September 26, 2001, between Wolf Point and Glasgow, Montana