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The rails stretch out before us
The flagman waves

We move forward down the snow-obscured tracks
Not knowing where we are going

Gliding past a low elongated platform
Then a low stone wall

Everything deserted empty cold
A few barren branch-frosted trees fingering the wind

A long low hulking warehouse
An elevated walkway teetering above us

A lonely semaphore in the snow
Its signal a brief pill of color melting into and blotting the monochrome white

Snow thinly drifting on the tracks

A junction we pass a switch the rails diverge
We are compelled along the right-hand set of tracks

The tracks on the left vanish into drifting snow
Snow blows toward us splats wetly and melts upon the glass

We approach a level crossing between low industrial buildings
Snow blowing from left to right across the tracks

At the level crossing a signal light a flagman a single forlorn pedestrian holding an umbrella against the stinging wind

We continue on between long empty loading ramps
Through interstices in guardrails and fences peek starved ghost trees

Time passes and all we know is this colorless white-gray world
These white-dark hulking shapes this wet gray-white snow

We’ve never been here
We will never be back

The tracks go on unscrolling
And we go on following the tracks

These endless parallels endlessly unravelling





Drawings by Tom Clark