19 degrees & trains rumbling into the siding at Rawlins—bright sun & cold that takes your breath away—Laramie in a gray blue luminous shadow under the sunrise—the red rock outcroppings & scrub pines & cell towers ay 8,000 feet—a faux log cabin convenience store advertising Native American gift items & free WiFi—Cheyenne a clammy pool of freezing fog—the skateboard shop two doors down from the cowboy apparel store—the old Union Pacific depot pale in the gray air—Our Lady of Peace Shrine at Pine Bluffs on a washboard & rutted red dirt road between Interstate 80 & a junk yard—the UP freights running across the Wyoming snows & the Nebraska grassland—snow geese scintillating & undulant flock spiraling & swooping over the truck stops—the longhorn cattle—the appalling feedlots rising in mounds of mud & manure & the reek saturates the car for miles—locusts & sleepy towns & the bustle of Lincoln exiting I-80 for 4-lane state route 2 heading for Iowa—& a Burlington Northern freight chugging under an overpass—& Syracuse, NE, 640 miles later, a ton with cobblestone streets downtown, 3 bars (one open, one closed, one out-of-business) & two convenience stores—tomorrow, Iowa, Missouri & into Illinois—
Pic shows a Union Pacific waycar in Pine Bluffs, WY; UP freight trains have been the guiding spirit of the trip so far...
Please stop by Alcools for my translation of Apollinaire's "Le Pont Mirabeau" ("Mirabeau Bridge”)