Amtrak is inspiring

I wrote this on a train to Plattsburgh from Albany.

In my youth, in the woods, I found a skeleton key.
I was walking, it was summer, I was on the old Indian trail.
I saw it: red-brown, rusted, embedded in the ground.
With roots of pine snaking around and arising from the floor
Backs of surfaced soil whales.
White-bone bitches shimmered in the sun, and the key was in the ground
I squatted on my heels and peered at the metal, brown, and loops like
clover at the head. Rings you could see through. I pinched through a clover-loop and pulled, but the packed-down ground held. I wanted it for my own, this skeleton key in the ground, its loops in the round, clover in infinity, round and round. So, I dug with a stick, and pulled with my child’s-might. The earth released its hold and gave it into my hand, as the original hand that crafted the shaft the teeth the clover leaves.

I pitched back on my rump with the dirt-covered key in hand. After the initial shock of hitting the ground, softened as it was by pine needles, I examined the key.

Where is the lock to this key now? Not that it would accept the rust-covered, dirt-caked teeth as authentic. It would not let me pass into the beyond. Was the key unimportant, the kind of key that could be replaced? No need to worry about the state, it will never again need to be authenticated and turned to let the possessor in to the beyond. No need to worry, the replacement is easily created, as if it never one-of-a-kind.

Or was it? Did they just bash it in, to the beyond? Did they circumvent the lock with clandestine craftiness. Does it let you, truly let you, in?

Else it remained unopened and undiscovered. It remains buried shallow or deep, far or near from the old Indian trial. Maybe it would still accept the dirt-covered teeth and hopefully, turning gently, it will release the bolt and I will pass in to the pure authentic beyond.

I keep an eye to the ground perhaps the hopeful lock found.