The Iron Cure By: Jim Gandolf

The Iron Cure

Poem

By:Jim Gandolf 

©️11212025

The Circle City faded in a gray and heavy mist,

I left behind a phantom life, a mouth I used to kiss.

The ghost of a wedding band, the sting of her betrayal,

Was beaten into rhythm by the grinding of the rail.

From Indianapolis pavement to a seat of velvet blue,

I bought a ticket for the West to find a point of view.

The engine pulled us westward, a needle through the thread,

Unstitching all the memories that rattled in my head.

We hit the Mississippi, that wide and muddy vein,

The spine of this great nation washing up against the train.

And as we crossed that water, churning dark and deep,

I felt the anger soften, I felt the sorrow sleep.

Then came the endless flatlands, the horizon stretched and taut,

Where the sky is big enough to hold a single, quiet thought.

The high and dusty desert, the sagebrush and the sand,

The medicine of motion across an unmapped land.

I sat within the viewing car, the glass a moving frame,

Where no one knew my history, and no one knew her name.

Up into the Rockies, where the air is thin and cold,

The mountains stood like giants, indifferent and old.

The snow upon the granite peaks, the eagle on the wing,

Made my broken heart appear a small and fragile thing.

I shared a drink with strangers as the sun began to sink,

We laughed about the future, clinking glass against the glass.

In the kindness of a traveler, I let the shadows pass.

We wound down through the canyons where the pine trees pierce the clouds,

Far from empty houses and the loneliness of crowds.

The Columbia River Gorge, a cut of green and gray,

Where waterfalls like ribbons washed the dust of miles away.

The river marched beside us, a guide to ocean shores,

Closing out the chapter on the life I lived before.

When Portland rose to meet me, in a coat of rain and moss,

I finally counted up the gain, and not just distinct loss.

I stepped onto the platform, a stranger to this ground,

The man who left was lost back East; the man arrived is found.

Jim Gandolf 

I went to live in Portland Oregon in a very difficult time in my life. I took an Amtrak Train from Indianapolis Indiana across the country. The people I met along the way were extremely friendly and welcoming to talk to. I wrote this poem and it was underlined beautiful by the views of our country.