END OF A RAIL LINE

 

You want to write more about this place.

Hard scrabble, sitting along route 521.

Write more than there is, mystery lingers here.

So much of Kershaw’s fate linked to the soil,

How it seems the whole town is headed that way.

Fading away except for the distant gold glitter that remains.

They say 2,000 live here, but there is no bustle on the streets.

Just worn out sides of buildings once used,

The place made by the railroad, rail lines that don’t stop here now.

Just a few grain cars straddle its tracks.

The gold mine a few miles away, digging away at the earth.

But crops of soybeans the real gold now.

They turn the fields purple and red in the fall, 

Unlike gold, they come back time and again.

Harvested and hauled by bin trucks that line up.

They take little of the earth, need no chemicals to grow.

Replenish the soil with nutrients for other crops.

The market always waiting for them.

The processing plant at the end of town, turning them to oil.

You never see the people, just the trucks and sound.

The line stretching for miles.

People still buy groceries at Smalls Market or the Dollar.

The motel filled with souls who stopped here,

Trying to remake themselves for a future of sorts.

You want to write more about this place.

Write more than there is.