A speaker hides beside a railroad track, running through a checklist like someone about to leave for good: a duffle bag, a lighter, a deck of marked cards. He has spent his whole life listening to trains and watching them pass, and now he plans to climb aboard one. The poem is full of sound. The whistle slides from a summons into a wail, the wheels thunder like a metal band, and one bad wheel shrieks like feedback.
What drives him isn't a love of travel. His present life feels cramped and polluted: the sky is "too narrow," the air hurts to breathe, and a tick burrowing into his leg adds a small, nasty sign that he's stuck in the wrong place. Against that, he imagines empty country out West so unclaimed it has no names yet. The mood moves from tense, patient waiting to restless excitement. The last lines, with the rails starting to "sing," suggest the moment has finally come and he is ready to go.