Signal Yard at Low Tide

At dawn the rail yard drinks a thin blue fog. Rust blooms on boxcars like old embers waking. Gulls stitch white thread through the torn sky. Somewhere a signal lamp keeps its red heartbeat.

We walk between tracks slick with last night’s rain, our shadows long as fishing nets on gravel. Coal dust and seawind share one bitter mouth; the day tastes of iron, tide, and peeled oranges.

A crane swings slowly, priest of a vanished industry, blessing each empty platform with its steel hand. From a cracked loudspeaker, static turns to birdsong, and even silence arrives with wheels beneath it.

By noon the fog lifts like a theater curtain. Sunlight strikes the rails and every line burns gold. For a moment the yard is an instrument tuned to weather, and the world moves forward on bright, singing wire.