A man meets a boyhood friend after more than forty years, and over whiskey and cigarettes the friend, now a locomotive pilot, tells him how many people have died under his train: three hundred and sixty in thirty years. The speaker, who once lived comfortably in a bungalow with dogs and a pet deer, listens as the driver recalls both small childhood envies and terrible memories from the tracks.
The driver speaks flatly, almost like a professional, yet the poem keeps cracking that surface. His eyes glisten, and the cigarette burns down to his fingertips without his noticing. The image he cannot forget is a woman who stood in the headlight and bowed with joined palms to him, her killer. He cannot stop the train, cannot even pray. The mood is heavy and haunted. Beautiful, ordinary scenes outside the window, with birds, wind and sunset, only deepen the contrast. The last lines, "All I know is to drive trains – / And to kill people," land as a quiet, painful self-judgment.