A Good Signal Man Will Get You Through An Uncertain Pass
for Mike Taylor
for Mike Taylor
engines belching hard to make the grade in the pitch black night
wheels heating up white hot & throwing sparks out in bursts
the engineer is all throttle & faith in tons of iron & steel
as the timetables & schedules don't reckon on soulfire
churning across the greatest of divides & racing
breakneck across the prairies with howling
winds & coyotes as their main acclaim
to just get the job done & make it
home again,
as long as you can find a home in the heartland
where a home fire burns for you away from lonesome...
away from the back porch blues of lost goodbyes & hastily
closing back doors into an oblivion avenue where you are young again
just a boy becoming a man that goes off to war, out of country, in country
blazing a trail of shooting stars that fall into the sea as you stroll along
with comrades in arms & letters & words & song & wine & women & love
always the love, the woman that leaves her calling card just out of reach
just as long as you write her down into verse after verse of the momentary
lost bucket of redeemers-come-lately that want to dare to dream of that
beach back then so long ago under the venetian heavens, o praise venus
her temple erected in a borealis of non-compliant metaphors above a
simple temple of man fashioned out of driftwood yet revered as a palace
of extravagant creations hewn into figurines of tempest & temptation
kept like a sacred heart preserved for every fallen memory that graced
the brass placard covered remnants of a playground pier that was just too
precious not be the devotional point of reference for your star as it lights down
on an engineers hand through a locomotive window as he pushes up the throttle
to make it up the grade on the spade black night that is haunted by the helping
hand of the most helpful & humble of all the spirits of signalman ever passed
this way & the wheels heat up white hot & throwing sparks out in bursts
& the locomotive is gonna make it tonight, guided by your signal light
guided by the falling of it on the earth tonight, in wreckless beams
guided into the carried away songs sung by the foxhole atheists
of the road ahead, so long and wide, that will be so much more
lonesome now that the signalman is going off
to leave signals from so faraway of a place as this
faraway land of afterlife in the memory of children
who discover words left hidden in closets of eternity
reams of words speaking of life in the template of the living of it all
by this signal left behind the children will seek these words
a single flag left to follow along the ribbons of glistening rails
to get to him the throttle must be kept full & steady
the song must be sung as if the words were iron & steel
all the tons of it needed just to carry you along, a little further down this line
for Mike Taylor
