Gondola Poem by jackilton peachum

Long ago of course; such errant behavior is no longer possible in the computer age: They have a computer in the locomotive, can tell right when you get on or off by the weight of the train! And they always know where you are-- even if you don't.

Two of us were crouching down at front of the car trying to keep warm. And the nightwind was pretty strong.
Traveling through.Kansas, maybe Nebraska-- somewhere in the west, near-west. One place is pretty much like another-- when you've been there you can only leave-- and the road you take out of town is the other end of the one that took you coming in.
We were chasing an almost full moon, the prairie was of night, and sometimes something rustled like a wind over cornfield--
a vegetable garden went by, the hills were bathed in a kind of eerie twilight that made the shadows stronger, then clouds moved in, scuttled across the face of the moon, went away again and the moon was on our right hand, then our left.
A light winked in the distance-- a farmhouse with a big oak tree in the yard, a child's rope-swing hanging from it.
Light in a window came on and passed, and we were left with our thoughts and the rumbling of the wheels, iron on iron.
Towards daylight, the moon setting, a siding, then a-little town came up-- but the train didn't stop or slow down.
Off in the distance, a whitewashed diner woke up.
And at that very moment the prairie chickens woke up & began drumming.