Norway’s Iron Road

Norway's Iron Road Michael Lee (bio) Keywords poetry, Michael Lee, deer, death, prisoners of war, Russia, train, railroad tracks There is an old joke I heard one winter,one popular among the farmersfrom Trøndelag to Nord-Norge: two deer run along the railroad.One says to the other, we have to get offthese tracks and into the forest. The other says no, if we can't outrunthe train here we'll never outrun itin the woods—and there the joke ends, but if we follow it a little longer—the trainchugs on quickly behind them, its steamcurling back along its long shimmering body like a gray kerchief torn loose by wind.Its light parts the dark, and the dark,like black water, rushes closed again over the tracks. The bellowing yellow eyegrows closer and louder. One deer gallopsso lightly its head does not even move. The muscles of the other's flanks churnforward and back like a steam engine'scoupling rods turning its wheels. The clatter of their hooves,a clear staccato charting the heart'sdark music through the valley. The hooves keep perfect time in the thincold air as the train cleaves their bodiesin half. The echo of hooves continues— [End Page 22] the train trundles on and I sip my coffeein silence. The early light strobesthrough the windows, pine, and spruce come to blur. In late autumn,when the country is blank with snow,so many deer are split by trains, the ground is stained red from Trondheimto Bodø, and the country beginsto look like a map sewn with blood. And if I let my mind wandereven further—as it is easy to doin the train's leather chair— watching the golden light crack openthe Northern farmlands like a blind,lost in the low murmur of voices in the dining car, the light clinkof coffee mugs, and the clackof the ticket inspector's hole punch as he passes through at each stop—I think of how, before the Second World War,there wasn't a single train line in the north, one needed to walk or ski betweentowns. Then miles and miles of trackswere laid by enslaved Russians, their mauls clanging against steellike metronomes. Worked to deathby the occupying Nazis, they were forced to bury their starvedcountrymen beneath the tracks.Their progress measured by their thinning [End Page 23] numbers, fresh dark soil erasedby snow—when the train lurches,and my coffee sloshes over the rim, I imagine that we have struck a body.Beyond the window, three fawns runthrough the trees. It has been said when prisoners of warare killed, the spirit, much smallerthan anticipated, steps cautiously up the ribs—curling like ivory stairs—and out of the body as if from a cellar,to then float off like steam before settling back into the bodyof a deer, terrified and fleeing.The spirit watches from inside the animal, a conductor frozen behind the controls,as the train kills them a second time. A third.Again. A country mapped with spilled yarn. [End Page 24] Michael Lee michael lee is a Norwegian-American writer and educator. Author of The Only Worlds We Know (Button Poetry, 2019), he has received grants and scholarships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the LOFT Literary Center, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Winner of the Scotti Merrill Award for poetry from the Key West Literary Seminar, Michael's poetry has appeared in The Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, Poetry Northwest, Copper Nickel, and Best New Poets 2018 among others. He lives in a cottage with his dog Levis.