She glides effortlessly above a wainscoting of parched range grasses, a steel fresco embellished of lights and tones and set against an unblemished wall of perfect Texas sky in a delicate balancing act of behemoth perched upon 136-pound iron, shadows perfectly cast as the October afternoon sun falls toward evening.
There is no blur of motion, only the slightest sigh of combusted carbon exhaling upward and fading to nothingness on a gentle and welcome north breeze.
Yet, forward she rolls, fulfilling the great destiny of her purpose-filled design: A near half-million-pound element of state-of-the-art inertia control; governess over the dynamic forces of tonnage strung out on her drawbar and breathing life and motion into global commerce through the thin bronchus of a trainline.
There is no garish gold-leaf framing to contain her form, nor Bright Common No.10 nail driven into a yellow pine stud to hang her from.
There is only her form, seemingly more alive than not, dividing the land from the sky in a mural of motion---
A frieze of elegant simplicity.
Rick Malo©2019
Southbound at MP40.5 near Lockhart, Texas.
3:50 pm, October 21, 2019.