Monday morning on the way to work I drop her off at Columbine and take Santa Fe downtown. I prefer the gritty underbelly of Denver to the sun-squint of Sixth Avenue east. To my right, the Englewood library and its out-of-place Egyptian obelisk, the Breakfast King shuttered and for sale, a semitrailer in a dirt lot selling Hatch green chile and, of course, the railyard. I have always loved trains, juggernauts crisscrossing past factories where slouching men drawl their miseries. A brawny orange Santa Fe diesel strains to heft a long line of hopper cars overtopped with coal. I slide the window down so I can hear the thumping surge of iron and steel, the rhythmic clacking of the rails, and see the groaning metal chain barreling forward while also reaching back: a past echoing with shrieking whistles. Some of the cars display graffiti murals—bubble letters like sad clowns peering through shrouds of grime. The coal cars slide by, irrevocably dull except for the speeding wheels which, polished by tons of friction, flash like lightning from the rails.
