Though I no longer believe

in Lancaster County

the bell scrapes out a chime

 

and the black engine the gouged-out mountain swallowed

loops dinging past tin-sided diner and derrick

bobbing its lullaby head over the town

 

of men in hats waiting under streetlamps

and the monocles of gas pumps and clipped round trees

that an old man's hand reaches down and straightens

 

under the hinged glass. Though horses

clop through sun-silent August

boys who'd be reaching

 

(were they my brothers)

beneath the gamey softness of laying hens

are watching The Polar Express,

 

uncanny digital faces

caught between child and cartoon.

Inside the National Toy Train Museum

 

is a replica of the National Toy Train Museum.

Though the bell rings only

the boy can hear it after he confesses

 

belief in the old man and the sleigh and the story

that everyone grows to learn untrue.

Though I never knew a red and tinsel Christmas

 

daily our voices lofted holy notes to rafters

we nailed with our tender hands

proud with hammers instead of toys,

 

laying a different world over this

asphalt maze of cravings.

Push the Button and Look Into the Mine.

 

Though the bulb inside shows plaster pink

Disney dwarves who never coughed up black

Pennsylvania coal, the land (our fathers said)

 

promised us gifts for being good

white souls fertile as bulls and plain

cotton obedience. Though I could say

 

why my plough hit rock, the millstone

was always the bells

striking the universal hours

 

for dinner and penance

and the rope of God

the blizzard-blinded followed from barn to hearth.

 

The movie ends and the lucky children

listen to what pleases them

on their mothers' phones and the toy train sings

 

the new start of its same circuit

with piercing light whistles like a boy

calling his brothers across

 

a field too far to hear.