that railroad bridge sentence
spelled out in dark Cyrillic
letter struts overtop the Ohio
finally sang me a train song
this morning on such a snow
globe set stage where dead
drifted harmonies float down –
iron wrought words are wasted
but the tune tells hard history
rattled between rails and ridges‐
music spilled from wastrel mills
falls to rust on stillborn steel
-
Chad Burrall was born and raised in Wheeling, and comes from ancestors going back to the Wetzels, Bonnets, McCrearys, and Coffields of Big Wheeling Creek. He recently placed in several categories in the WV Writers Contest, has been published in several poetry anthologies. He can usually be found enjoying some of Wheeling’s great local songwriters or fly fishing as remote a stream as he can currently get away with… Chad is currently working on his first full length book of poems and can be reached at cburrall@comcast.net.
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