The wristwatch of Casey Jones

or,

how the earth learned to tell time


Like the first blood to flow
through the delta’d veins
of a giant slumbering dream:
the first trains

carried prayers—
let me never be found
to be falling down—cannonball
between far-flung towns;

afternoon could be so wide
it gave no sign
of breaking;
before we had watches

nights be so unbroken
we knew no more
than earth knew
what course our globe was taking.

The engineer
of the iron horse
rode high behind
the sweeping pilot,

into the darkness
his six-pipe whistle like Orpheus
sounded; we set our watches
by it.

In loco moveri:
Aristotle’s phrase, describing movement
by change of position
in space;

in time
we call it progress,
unreeling a schedule clear
to the horizon-crease,

and up the skies:
Casey Jones
always got her there on the
advertised,

outbellowed cows
to clear the track. His whistle,
familiar Tennessee to Mississippi,
began softly,

rose, then doubled back
to a whisper. His own watch
stopped at the time of
impact

Skull crushed,
the coroner said,
his right arm
sundered.

Suddenly,
at 3:52 AM,
the 30th of April,
1900.

Reports begin to sound
both too much
and not enough like strings of
numbers.

Ole 382 approached
the town of Vaughan;
26, 72, and 83
waited on the siding

but a scorpion tail
of four cars curled
onto the main line;
a flagman

at 3,000 feet
went by unseen or unheeded,
flares at 800, 500,
at eighty

miles per hour,
the airbrake and whistle as Casey
glimpsed the No 83’s tail
just three hundred feet shy.

The fireman,
who at his engineer’s urging
jumped to safety
remembers Casey

quite happy
at the progress The New Orleans Special
Fast Mail Train was making:
making up time

shoveling on coal
pouring on steam Casey said,
“old girl’s got her dancing
slippers on tonight”

Not a passenger was hurt.
The engine later was repaired.
Only the good engineer and
his time-piece

stopped;
in the embankment
on the track’s
east side

the imprint of the headlight,
boiler, and wheels
were visible each to the spoke;
and when these disappeared,

corn,
scattered by the wreck,
grew, each summer, for years
in the memory of the nearby fields.

The hammer and the new machine

(A Blues for Guillermo, nicknamed Memo, who worked making danishes for seven years until last week)



He was about to ask me to the movies; I would have said no;
I declined when he asked me to play basketball—where are you now,
Guillermo, you said when you went to Mexico you’d take me with you

This is the hammer that killed John Henry, but it won’t kill me

I only saw him for about one second in his street clothes
leather coat, shoulder bag, it wasn’t that he was handsome
or not handome in bakery clothes face framed by white

Pictures fall like a forty pound hammer on my heart, ten hours a day

The day we met, Memo asked me to spell out my name
on a paper fry-cook hat on the floury table. The day after
the day we met, Memo wore my name upside down—it isn’t just that

This is the hammer that killed John Henry, but it won’t kill me

Memo asked me where I lived, was it near the pool
he rode the #11 past every day. I said why not just get off,
Memo, why did you not get off?

Pictures fall like a forty pound hammer on my heart ten hours a day, twelve hours a day

They were looking for someone else; Memo answered the door,
they ran a check on his ID. I can not picture where he is,
I do not know what these words mean.

This is the hammer that killed John Henry, but it won’t kill me

Paula’s shopping for a new machine
which can be programmed to roll out the dough in sheets
but will it sing?

This is the hammer that killed John Henry, and it won’t kill me.
For this I am ashamed.

When you feel like writing a blues song

Hood River baby, zigzag home in your small black car.
Walk lightly baby, you stepped out of your blues song.
Up on Mount Tabor, you know one lamp is switched on.
And that's not rain on your shoulders, it's just the darkness
wishing for hands.