Following is the third and final section of my poem “Colorado,” which I hope our readers have enjoyed. I’m working on a new collection of poems and prose sketches whose title is “Stars in the Dark.” The book includes older and new writings, most of which are not related to Lowell—although, as Dick Howe says, everything seems to be connected to Lowell somehow, if you can see far enough into whatever it is and if you are fortunate enough to have exceptional peripheral vision of the historical kind.—PM

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Colorado

3.

Death is like the last piece

Of that hundred-car coal train

Being pulled by six green Rio Grande diesels

Outside of Colorado Springs.

For the longest time

It’s all noise and power and motion,

And you think the line won’t end—

But there’s no invented engine

To make that dream come true.

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—Paul Marion (c) 2010