MELODIES OVER THE RAILROAD

Feel the wind from the train as it scurries down

Over the trestle tracks, over the rolling southern green hills;

Passed the smiling woodpecker in the pines, passed the town

As he whistles a tune about us, passed by tattered whiskey stills.

Stick your jubilant face out of the box-cart as you enter the thickest fog,

Passed the golden lush daffodils and honeysuckles over the vine-covered log.

The wet air smells like the nectar of those springtime things,

Like the celebratory choir harmonizing in your heart as each sings,

Passed the nestled red brick town where kids know how one truly lives,

With their necks warmed by the rays of the rising sun that gives and gives;

Passed the old off-white paint chipped barber shop and the quaint pizzeria,

On the whistling railroads swaying right to left like the movement of Pangaea.

Passed hundreds of waterfalls spouting and pouring over all the flat limestone,

Passed the open meadow of infinite clover where mother deer sits with her spotted doe,

Sipping from a puddle of last night’s rainfall, jumping at the humming engine of the train,

Through the glowing blue ridges of rocks rolling over the Great Smoky Mountain;

Passed the bearded old man with pale blue eyes,

holding his old pipe, lighting his dry tobacco,

Passed the warm melodies of the smitten hopeful souls

playing addictive chords on their banjo.

Airforce veteran, Simon Havok, has previously been published in the Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review, Lucky Jefferson, 4Lines and has featured as a poet in The Elevation Review’s LKMND Podcast. In 2019, Havok finished his first autobiographical book of poetry entitled Through The Eye & Mind of A Frail Vessel.