In the Douglas Valley
New moon on a clear night
in November does not bleach glass to silver, but settles darkness here, where the two-train railway that runs through the valley
bisects the sealed
road that collapsed its steel vein. In a fuller moonlight neat silver might belly the clouds, gild slips where wet surfaces mirror the sky, maybe.
The creeks, cleared
here to drain the swamps, could enmesh the ground in thin light
while the trees anchor themselves
each to their own impermeable thicket of shadow.
In the full moon’s hard light,
rails and water would shine, rain be a glistening afterthought — but under cover of new moon, pulling up, the tracks twist themselves out of the ground into such shapes of metallic logic as no human mind could bear.
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