Rust eats the flank of a sleeping giant
Bolts surrender to the quiet violence
Gravel driveway holds its breath at dusk
Twilight paints the metal orange rust
That freight car sings a steel lament
Every rivet knows exactly where it went
Unraveling slow on a gravel bed
Dying proud with nothing left to dread
Cook watches from the diner window pane
He knows the sound of metal giving way
Coffee steam curls round his weathered face
Heard it in the pipes at this very place
That freight car sings a steel lament
Every rivet knows exactly where it went
Unraveling slow on a gravel bed
Dying proud with nothing left to dread
Regulars don't look up from their plates
Eggs run yellow on white porcelain
They've watched the car decay for forty years
Seen the slow surrender to the rain
Night shift ends but the car keeps breathing
Steel sighs deep in cooling twilight air
No fanfare marks the final coming undone
Just gravity doing what gravity does there
Morning brings the scrap man with his torch
He'll cut her down to scrap and haul
But tonight she holds her twisted posture
Defiant against entropy and fate
That freight car sings a steel lament
Every rivet knows exactly where it went
Unraveling slow on a gravel bed
Dying proud with nothing left to dread
Diner lights flicker on the gravel drive
The freight car groans one last time tonight
Cook flips the sign to closed and locks the door
Then silence settles on the metal floor
That freight car sings a steel lament
Every rivet knows exactly where it went
Unraveling slow on a gravel bed
Dying proud with nothing left to dread
Steel remembers how to rest at last
Gravel holds the shape of what was there
Morning comes but the car ain't there
