THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD
An engineer’s brain saw a cross-country train
Feeding greedy men’s dreams of riches
But to build the train across fields of grain
Is hard — don’t they know them sons of bitches?
And yet the crazy thought
Of just one-week travel
Makes our own sweaty juices flow.
It almost seems funny that
We work for money,
But that’s not all,
We know.
The railroad’s BIG in every way.
A huge, gutsy step from our past
It’s scary, it’s hairy.
And dirty? Very.
We work it and hope we last!
But while it’s BIG. We’re just a tie
A spike on the railroad’s tracks
We want a piece, of the riches, ‘fer sure
In return for breaking our backs.
“Whatchya gonna do
With the money you make?”
I’m gonna start a store, how ‘bout you?
“I’m gonna buy some land,
Have kids, like I planned.
And run a farm
Just like my old man.”
The railroad’s BIG in every way.
A huge gutsy step from our past
It’s scary, it’s hairy.
And dirty? Very.
We work it and hope we last!
This cross-country train is BIG; we know it.
It’s why we keep on toiling.
It’s bigger than BIG, a crushing task
Through ice and rain and boiling.
Cuz here’s the thing we cannot do.
We simply cannot blow it.
And cuz it’s BIG, we continue to try.
It’s bigger than BIG; we work or die.
It’s BIG
We know it in our gut
It’s BIG
We want a piece, a cut
It’s BIG, no lie.
We work and cry
It’s BIG
It’s BIG
It’s BIG
Let’s not die.
This piece will be set to music and will be a part of my next historical fiction production, The Woman Who Saved the Transcontinental Railroad.