Flattened Pennies

There has been some contention about these tracks, about where exactly they lead. I have walked them a good length. There were a number of human and natural dramas to be seen. A family of nudist picnicking. Hobos cooking dinners in tins over a fire. Seagulls cracking shells on the steel.

But the really interesting section of track is where it meets the edge of the world and curls out, into the heavens. You know you're approaching the end of the line when the rose colored fog carrying a smell of lavender and sea salt rolls in off the ocean. The tracks wind into a wood with moss for carpet, vacuumed twice a day by Sonia, a glowing Mexican housekeeper. There are bearded fairies there who roll the rails out like bread and get off work at dinner time. I've seen them walking home, covered in dough, eastward into the foothills, each one carrying a flower home to his wife. Squirrels carry umbrellas through the paths in the branches hanging over the tracks. They love to talk about the weather but not the actual weather, that moving living art piece in the sky that pervades our every experience, but the weather reports. And then there are the Mermaids who giggle, flopping away from the tracks, back to the water to watch and wait for the trains to come and flatten their pennies.