I place two pennies, one on either rail:

warm from my pocket they melt the frost there

then harden into place against the coming tremors.

The ties too are tufted white, and fibrous mounds

of coyote scat, and the next occasional spike

worked loose, which I fling like the others in the river.

A crooked volunteer tree offer up its last

or its only apple, hard and thick-skinned,

bitter still but sweetened a bit by the cold.

Along this mile-long arc of track, four springs

and four steep chutes choked with blackberries,

and four cold pools crowded with cress.

It’s a black fly wind, all ice and bite,

and the usual fishermen have all gone home.

Trainmen hate those pennies. I’ll hide

until the engine’s past, hide again

for the obsolete caboose this short-line throwback

still uses. They hate the clunk and jump,

the eighty-ton shudder pummeling their bones.

But I want something to show for this day

other than a mile of awkward walking,

a wind so fierce and relentless the chimney smokes

lie out in rigid lines and vanish, and the only smell

is snow, snow, snow, like a fat and generous relative