Trains wailed into the night…freight trains carryin’ goods throughout the country…some empty cars…the old man stood by the tracks watchin’ as it went by slowly…then picked up speed and then slow again…he was waitin’ for the right opportunity…

All his life he wanted to jump a train…head out into the dark not knowin’ where he was goin’…never sure where he’d wind up…could be the southside of Chicago over by Canaryville where Sandburg told of the old stockyards playin’ host to cattle and pigs comin’ in for slaughter each day….

Maybe out West in San Francisco where Kerouac recited poetry at all hours of night…highly fueled on alcohol and bennies…gettin’ his kicks on jazz played by old black men in bars boppin’ it up while the crowd yells yeah…yeah…yeah…

Could be he’d go down South to the land of Dixie followin’ that ghost of Faulkner into Mississippi with tall oaks and dogwoods coverin’ old dirt roads traveled on day after day… men haulin’ cotton to be processed at the local gin while their women are at home stirrin’ up mysteries for children to live off of for generations to come…

Then there’s New England…dear old New England with words carved out by Melville…travelin’ up and down I95 with Queequeg on lookout as the train slides into New York with traces of Whitman’s words dancin’ from the lips of poets both young and old…callin’ out, I Sing The Body Electric…

But Brooklyn’s not Brooklyn anymore and the prophet Miller has long since gone on to the next life…He danced his way onto the streets with twelve messengers followin’ his every step…a jitterbug…muskrat ramble…the Charleston…a dime a dance…”Once you’ve given up the ghost everything follows with dead certainty,even in the midst of chaos…”

Trains wailed into the night…freight trains carryin’ goods throughout the country…some empty cars…the old man stood by the tracks watchin’ as it went by slowly…then picked up speed and then slow again…He was waitin’ on the right opportunity…