Robert E. Ray

     Boot Tracks
“These are the days that must happen to you.”
—Walt Whitman

Graffitied freight trains ran daily
Indianapolis to Cincinnati.
Miles out, we heard the roar,
caught the light beam before
the shrill whistles and horns.
We propped our shotguns on the posts,
felt the weight of the cottontails—
gutted & stuffed in old Wonder bags
swing low on our flame-orange backs.
We dug out handfuls of Jolly Rancher
wrappers, lint, coins from our pockets,
lay the bright and dull on the rails.
The blackbirds stayed in place, bills down
in the picked corn fields, mined ocher
kernels from the black and white clots,
deep furrows, and the broken stalks—
amber ears ripped open. From the fence row,
we hollered and waved at the man
blowing by in the locomotive,
felt the hard ground and our knees shake,
watched the brown iron rails bow down,
rise, the silver-rim wheels roll by—
the coins disappear
like sparrows on the leafless boughs,
the rabbits in the ravines.

The new snow turned black on the ties,
shined like knife blades in the pines.
We never found flattened pennies.
We left boot tracks in half-thawed mud,
blood drops atop the silvered rails—
our pockets empty, the blackbirds
iridescent purple, crimson-billed
cold at sundown.

Robert E. Ray is a retired public servant. His poetry has been published by Rattle, The Ekphrastic Review, The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, Wild Roof Journal, High Shelf Press, and Beyond Words Literary Magazine. Robert is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University. He lives in rural southeast Georgia.