Iron Goat Trail Poem by LONDIS CARPENTER

Sometimes time seems to run out of kilter.
I don't know if the hands on the clock
Turn around and actually run backwards,
Or if time really does occasionally run in reverse.
But I do know that, once in a while,
Memories become as real as Mama's apple wood switch,
With a painful stings sharp as open heel-blisters
From hand-me-down boots.

I also know that deja vu is just another name for
Those awakened memories.

But I don't know what goes on
When a boy remembers things that happened
Before he was ever born.

And I don't know why I remember what happened
At the site of the original Cascade Tunnel in 1910.

Sometimes I still walk east on Highway 2
For about five and a half miles
And then turn left onto an unmarked road.
I keep walking through the thick vegetation
Until I reach a sign that says Iron Goat Trail.
From there I visit a place I know, where I can
Look down on the Old Cascade Tunnel.

But I never go there at night.
Not because of the ghosts.
But because of the bears and the cougars.
I really don't like visiting the place.
It's a place of death.

In 1910 two trains were stuck here in the snow.
They were swept into the creek by a massive avalanche.
One hundred people were killed.
There has never been
A memorial erected for them.
And they say the ghosts of all those people
Still haunt the mountain.

It's the eeriest place I've ever been.
Not because of the ghosts,
I don't really believe in the ghosts.

But because I remember.

Sometimes I still walk east on highway 2.
I visit a place I know, where I can
Look down on the Old Cascade Tunnel...
Where I still haunt the mountain.