January 20-26, 2014: Laura Grace Weldon and Sam Silva

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad

What’s alive seems puny
in darkness this large.
An engine’s steaming eye wavers, 
then train cars too big to fail
cartwheel down a wet hillside
in shrieking metal tantrums.
An embarrassment of goods
sprawl across quiet grass:
imported TVs, broccoli, children’s shoes.
 
Before dawn, machines larger
than what lies
are ordered to a resurrection.
Silent crowds watch 
cranes lift each hulking body
and bulldozers crush what’s left
into unwatchable, uneatable, unwearable
mud-licked trash.
 
Lifetimes ago my uncle raced
behind trains with other poor boys
collecting fallen coal shards
for a few moments heat.
The day a car uncoupled,
spilling frozen sides of beef,
armed guards arrived to destroy the cargo
but hungry people pushed onto the tracks.
They bent gladly all the way home
bearing supper’s heavy promise. 
 
Torn hillside nearly empty, still
those who know what it is to be broken
stand on the crushed grass
staring at tracks

leading away from here.

Calling the Dog

Following messages left in leaves…soil…air
he wanders too far.
When I call    he pauses
quickening
to hurl fullness and glory
ahead of the self
like whales breach…tigers lunge…hawks soar.
There’s nothing but an arc
between hearing his name and springing
toward the one who named him.
 
I want this completeness.
I want to feel 100 trillion cells spark
from my body in answer
to what we call spirit.
I want to taste 
the shimmering voltage course
from every rock…tree….star.
 
A moment before reaching me
he unsprings,
back to golden fur and brown eyes

arriving tongue first.

Dreams of Mice

Brains of sleeping mice reveal
to science, unwittingly,
that scent locks in memory
like Proust’s tea and cake.
 
While lab coats scan, measure
and tabulate in chambers
scrubbed of odor,
tender-limbed mice dream
and reminisce.
 
Today’s autumn air conjures
toast my mother made,
starlings swooping in unison,
and you, the comfort of your smell
in the bed where
our bodies mingle.
 
If baby mice curl in our closet
among boxes and blankets, surely
our scent enters their dreams,
lingering through their small

remembering lives.   

Ghost of a Christmas Spent Alone

Dead people can’t speak
…they drag their souls, their heavy feet
away from the mumbling utterance
which the lake of fire becomes

…and in that evil night
lie down
wishing that they could sleep

…dead people!
…as if killed by war
in the winter of this silent
army town.