A Coat to Keep Her Warm

[Magpie]

Thank you for your thoughtful critique.
I think I need the "sit in her seat" line. Otherwise the reader wouldn't know the woman was on the train, she might otherwise just have seen the Buffalo from a cabin window, or astride a horse. Although I need the reader to know the woman was on the train, as I reread the poem with your concern I see the wording is a bit clunky. I think I'll need to change that.

-- fair point. it was probably the wordiness that I meant... It could be trimmed and rearranged something like

She was so old
she could call back the days
when she would sit on rumbling trains
crossing the land watching the brown...

The black the brown beasts was my way of saying they were black and brown. I thought it had a better flow "brown and black". If I make the reader scratch his head a bit I consider that a good thing.

Head scratching in what way? Confusion is not necessarily a good way to go unless it's called for.
'see the brown the black beasts' seems like a typo to me 'see the black brown beasts' could work though

Sharps rifles, or Buffalo rifles, could be fired from 500 yards away, hence the silent nature of the lead.
Yes, "rippling THE Golden grass"
I had already decided on a rewording of the last two lines, exactly because of the repetition of "kept". Tentatively it will be "She kept her coat though/it warmed her when the fires waned."
My feeling is sometimes less is more when it comes to the woman. I don't think I want to expand on her, although I think you're right about the title.