The scenic railway of the world.

My head hung outside the small windows
–a dog in the wind.
A clicking, camera and clicking
twenty-eight hundred feet up.
Catching the spread of two broad-winged
birds taking in the sights and the scents
of the trees elevations and the declines
of the many valleys.

A plunge of our train and we would have met
our maker, but the tracks are sturdy now,
and the clacks of the rails lead us to the next corner
or the next spiral incline through a mountain
to another valley of glacier lakes.

But our prospectors had no such luxury.
Their mules caring picks and shovels hatchets
cans of beans, jerky, a pot for coffee, and one
fry pan.

We see the original railway now a picturesque ensemble
of wood built
with ingenuity and it was scary beyond the what-ifs
and how many might have died

before it was finished.

A short block of town set up
with provisions or trade for the gold nuggets
burning a hole in the prospector’s pockets.
Stake, in the 1890’s with the gold
strike in Alaska.

Claims had to get
to the Bureau of Land Management
and were tipped in the assessor’s office.
Their gold weighed, were a little uneven with the help

of a finger or two,
for the hard-working men
Many fights and deaths in the offices
or the so-called honest supervisors.
.