Shroud of Flames

Sitting on a hillside, ominous and black
A massive tank of petrol bled beneath the tracks.

Seen as steaming smokestacks in a sea of fire,
The engine nearly vanished, embraced by searing spires
The raging yellow river branded like an iron
As a scream betrayed the torment of a child

Along the railway bed, a vast amount of oil
Had waited for a flame to parboil, bake and broil.

Engineer Pat Sexton and fireman Billy Young
Saw the engine bathed in incandescent tongues,
Flames that licked and laughed and danced about and sung
Causing every breath to scorch their livid lungs.
Sexton drove until roasting flesh and pain
Forced evacuation. Still his hands remained
Fastened to the throttle as his flesh sustained
Charcoal colored blisters macerating him with pain

But language fails to tell the sorry state of those
Trapped inside the coach where flaming oil exposed
Their callow bodies to a merciless inferno
Extending from their faces to the tips of torrid toes

Meanwhile, in the wake of the rushing pyre,
Victims rolled around in the snow like tires
Desperate to escape the philosophy of fire
Making every moment mad, malevolent and dire

Standing out like shadows encircled by the snow
Were two misshapen masses as black as Satan's soul
Recognized only by fragments of their clothes
Clinging to their limbless trunks like the scent around a rose

The former Sadie B., Wife of Lewis Haynes,
Had only lived in wedlock two years 'til her remains
Were recognized by nothing but the gold ring he located
Near a shapeless relic both beloved and ill fated
Nearby lying like a mockery of man,
Another blackened corpse was the maiden, Miss Moran
Sitting in an alabaster drift as snowflakes danced
Around her head and gently landed on her hands
Other victims of the flaming holocaust
With gnarly nubs remaining from the limbs they lost
Were randomly arranged like ashes in the frost
Their silence speaking loudly of insanity and loss

Conductor Townsend said, peering through a mask
Revealing nothing but his eyeballs as he rasped:
"Such a fire you never saw. It was an oil fire... AN OIL FIRE! Ain't nothin' but an oil fire makes such a hellish inferno! And there I was right in the middle of it... with that car echoin' with the screams of women and the howls of men as the train rushed into that flamin' abyss."