Nothing sadder than seeing a promising technological device/facility left abandoned, being devoured by the elements. I saw the post some days ago and yesterday I went around town taking some pictures of places that transmit a similar feeling. I’ll work on a post about that.

As I commented on other railroad-related poems, railroads impress me as one hell of an invention. It spread across the countries with such power and determination; it did not respect limits, natural barriers, cultures, lives. It just imposed its will and to see a piece of that puzzle in shatters, in ruins is quite an impression. It’s like looking at an old decrepit dictator, unable to muster his old power. Nothing last forever, that’s a sure thing.

Two historical images lay out the road for the interpretation of the poem: the scattered parachutes and the fools’ gold rush. Both convey images of destruction, of territorial invasion that have “come full circle.”
This image is further magnified by the following lines:

subtropical stop along the tracks
where native spirits flourished
and laughed behind tan settlers' backs

The holocaust is detached from its boisterous irreversibility by the rather positive view of it as a “flourishing of the native spirits” laughing at the white man’s arrogance and audacity. Of course we can read it as a past flourishing, the one stopped by white men’s predatory ambition and the laughter reflects then the natives’ naiveté at ignoring the power of the paled-face.
“no pipe of peace” was honored, no contract signed was respected. No BIA compensatory measures could fix the Trail of Tears, the Wounded Knees, or the ever shrinking reservations.
Like a curse to vindicate past injustices, the dilapidated railroads seem to epitomize the dead body of past aggressors, the unfulfilled promises made to white and colored alike.

the veins that fed this place:
a photograph of fancies
and dreams that met their fate