Linda L. Bielowski, Ph.D. - Evoking Small Towns lyrics

Railroad ties overlaid with wiry thicket, bramble whisker mustaches, marred by steel-toed boot prints from Gandy Dancers' fancy footwork. Tracks rolled up and put away like sidewalks on home-for-supper, waning weeknights in small towns where the trains no longer go. To rattle and rumble like twisters roaring, with warning whistle echoes and smoke signal billows blanketing pastures of plenty. Scattered like sheep grazing on hillsides, farmhouses, white as church steeples, point to the promise of a future home overhanging the archeological remains of rotting billboards on broken-down barns. Yards grow clothes poles standing sturdy as crosses in a cemetery, with grapevine lines connecting the empty space between breaths-- the hyphen of life and d**h--in small towns where the trains no longer go. Embedded in the memory quilts and mind prairies, s**led at the breasts of plain people who love, birth, and bury in their soil, small towns shake the cold from their bones and the dust from their feet to face a new day in the East light where the trains no longer go