3500
After dark every Halloween
since living social in Perkiomen Valley
for seven long years,
a shrill whistle train whistle
(often compared to the sound
of a bird's call, particularly
a large bird like a hawk or a crane,
due to its piercing, high-pitched
and long-lasting whistle-like quality)
soundcloud heard
from afar clear as a bell,
yet nary a train present
since locomotives stopped running
through Schwenksville, Pennsylvania valley in 1976,
when Pennsylvania Railroad
gave up its rail assets
to Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail).
However, some passenger "rambles" took place
from Reading to Schwenksville in the late 1960s.
Matter of fact beginning at the junction
of the Schuylkill River Trail in Oaks,
the trail uses much of the former rail bed
of the Perkiomen Line of the Reading Railroad.
The Perkiomen Trail
created in 2003, often called, the “Perky”,
the trail rolls down the valley
of Perkiomen Creek,
which may have been a reference
by local American Indians
to the surrounding cranberry bogs.
The northern end of the trail begins
at Morrow Pavilion in Green Lane Park,
where trail users can find parking and restrooms.
The 20-mile Perkiomen Trail
follows the route of the Perkiomen Creek
from Oaks to Green Lane Borough.
It connects to the Schuylkill River Trail
and the Audubon Loop.
For most of its length, the "Perky,"
known by many, uses the former rail bed
(as iterated earlier)
of the Perkiomen Line of the Reading Railroad.
Every other time of year
outer limits of the twilight zone
spread dark shadows,
which creep along the edge of night
startling a driver unexpectedly
yet instinctually to veer
away from harm's way
courtesy a nocturnal creature,
now ghost rail activity heard to scare
the living daylights
out of atheists like myself,
who quickly utter a prayer
immediately afraid then jubilant,
cuz prevarication (housed within
a ghastly fashion) my métier,
which brilliant notion
sparked immediately, née instantaneously
after discerning unquestionable choo-choo
within a kiloampere,
a unit of measurement equal
to one thousand amperes.
An ampere is defined
as the amount of current
that flows through a conductor
when one coulomb of charge
passes through it in one second.
