When in doubt, go to the vault.

I'm a little tired today, so I thought I might post a little poetry I wrote a while back.

At the station.

Five years old and my mother drags me
down to the tracks
to see the station before the bulldozers come.
After McCrory's
we walk down the hill
past one room bars where 9 a.m. drunks
wait out the day,
to the rails that stretch fat across the old canal bed
and then tighten to one line
at the crossing
where the station sits.

In the light yellowed from dust shrouded windows
and weak bulbs in smoke-crusted shades,
the scavengers inspect what the railroad left:
doorknobs, mirrors, and light fixtures.
The woman with the cash box explains
that somebeody has already taken the sink with its brass taps.
Piece by piece somebodies will strip the building
to its four walls, roof, and floor.

Two men, tanned and creased, come out of the sun
and stand with their knotted hands
on the doorframe
on the ticket counter
on the worn and wrinkled map.
Although older than my mother
they cry beneath their caps,
and at five I don't understand;
I'm sitting in the corner
my hands thrust into a cardboard box
half-full of rusted spikes.