welted with spikes

despite his embrace too slim
to secure half an armhold about her trunk
he would take her down. he would
given days of patience or much less
with his brothers of sleeveless gusto.
---
they would pull her to the earth and deliver her
wet and horizontal and on rails
mirrored steel glass laid yesterday.
a double seam of silver it snakes still
mid slope through the passes.
they rode here as cattle
and still are
nights ago in the echoes of a steel can.
---
a true dubstep cut was all their ears knew
for two days in the dark. a rhythm granted only
a shadow of life to the chorus of cicada and cricket
and grasshopper
present in memories of east.
---
occasional lines of brilliance would flicker
attention away from the audible gaps in the rails
and frame the long doors to either their sides.
doors shut to movement
the only company to keep flesh and skulls
from greeting bleached basalt ballast. 
---
she was here in the valley. quiet
for centuries
nine total.
she believed in the pace of the trickle
and drank generously
until they erected their thin walled camp
alongside the opaque rapids of screaming glacial melt.
above the constant rounding of stone under water
their glass and their metal
brought out by nightly spirits
sang her absence that would be and is still. 
---
they are here deeper and again to bring her in
for pulp and planks and pay for one more day
while hope lingers on the breath of the silent planters
who will follow with long shadows
again to begin with haste
what for millennia knew only the balance
of eagle and bear and the musk of salmon carcass.