Off the Track

 Mark Trechock

 

At Creel we paid the two pesos

to see the woman living in a cave

the way her ancestors did,

soot on the walls, darkness and wood smoke,

newborn in arms and the older boy

running and running in circles.

 

We caught the train west,

saw the chasm at Barranca del Cobre

through the charcoal smoke of taco vendors,

bought a basket made from branches,

as supple and fierce as human thighs.

 

Back on the rails, we stretched

our heads from the platform between cars,

the wind remaking our faces

into shapes we could only imagine.

We thought of the Tarahumara,

somehow immune to the heat

running barefoot through the desert,

scaling the hot clay inclines,

keeping up with the deer.

 

Approaching the trestle we slowed

as if coming upon an accident,

but below, among the pines,

near the bottom of a vertical world,

the coach cars had lain for years,

positioned like disjointed limbs,

undergrowth pushing through their frames.