Corresponding Lines, Missoula, Montana

"Mossbawn, my first house, was beside the railway. 
And along the railway, there ran telegraph wires. 
And along the telegraph wires, there used to run raindrops. And we used to think the telegrams were sent in the raindrops. 
So this is called "The Railway Children."

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting / We were eye-level with the white cups / Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires. 
Like lovely freehand they curved for miles / East and miles west beyond us, sagging / Under their burden of swallows. 
We were small and thought we knew nothing / Worth knowing. 
We thought words travelled the wires / In the shiny pouches of raindrops, / Each one seeded full with the light / Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves / So infinitesimally scaled / We could stream through the eye of a needle."
- Seamus Heaney, Poet and Much More (1939-2013), from an NPR interview 

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