The Legend of the Peacetime Soldiers

Well heeled faux Tudor Art-Deco streets

of Dartford to Bexleyheath - a far cry  

from Alabama’s dusty divided threadbare tracks

and sun-bleached tumbledown stoop-fronted shacks.

The drone of suburban trains, London bound

never held a candle to the haunting sound

of the Santa-Fe freight trains’ Capote wail

or duo’d a coyote’s scream with the wind it his tail.

And on a suburban platform of a well-to-do town

in a time of plenty, unburdened by war.

Middle-class free-spirits with time on their hands

traded forgotten music from a far-away land.