I Digress(ed).../A Fast Running Train Whistles Down

Last time, I started down a vein that I'm not too keen on continuing. As much as I feel the necessity of people speaking out in social commentary, I don't want this to turn into some kind of soap box or analogous medium of opinion flaunting.

 I am, however, continuing along the track of Woody Guthrie. I recently finished his autobiography "Bound for Glory" which, if I have not said already, should be on your list of things to read before you complete your brief stay here at hotel Life. In his book, there is a chapter entitled "A Fast Running Train Whistles Down" about an incident where his mother, who unfortunately suffers from mental health problems, sets fire to their home and is then sent off to a mental institution on a "fast running train whistling down". As a tribute to him, I took this idea and turned it into a villanelle.
 The villanelle is a poetic form of 19 lines that incorporates the repetition of the first and third line as the closing of each subsequent stanza with the final being four lines, the last two of which are the first and third lines of the peom. It was originally an Italian form, however, one of the most famous examples is Dylan Thomas's (from whom Robert Zimmerman took the name Bob Dylan) "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night". The one that I wrote takes its name from the chapter in "Bound for Glory".

A Fast Running Train Whistles Down
 -For Woody

 A fast running train whistles down.
The sun glows out complacently.
Away somewhere we heard the howl.

The hollow shell burned to the ground,
The twisting wreck of hopeless dreams;
A fast running train whistles down.

Everywhere I can hear the sound;
The flames come creeping up on me.
From somewhere I can hear them howl:

The demons bathing underground,
Roiling blood-lust of Satan's fiends.
The train of hell is whisl'ng down.

 I hear the echo fading out;
We all forget your mockery-
So far away the fading howl

Reaches the mind's unfading scowl;
The wind destroys our constancy.
A fast running train whistles down,
Our tear-stained eyes can hear its howl.

 -Y.M. Potter