Hurtling through darkness, November. It’s been raining for three weeks, the fields, beneath a gibbous moon, shine like lakes, a few drowned trees reach stark fingers out of the water. We sit in the bar-car, empty but for ourselves, the conductor, the barman. We pretend to read, eavesdropping shamelessly. They are talking about music, the conductor plays the cello in amateur chamber groups and orchestras at both end of his run. He keeps one cello in Eugene and the other in Portland, like a man with two wives.
Like a man with two wives, the conductor is nervous, he checks his face often in the blurry window of the night train. He’s different in the south, less refined, he wears a five-o’clock shadow and doesn’t bother to brush the cigarette ash off the front of his suit. Up north he’s careful, he changes his shirt before he steps down from the train, hails a taxi with the insouciance of the sophisticated city dweller.
The insouciance of the city dweller, we’ll never have but we sit at cafe tables wherever we go and watch them with their valises, their Smart phones, their hair mussed in that salon perfect way, their expensive shoes. We’ll always be hicks, not matter how we imitate the black clothes, the scarves, even if we took up smoking again, we’d only burn our fingers on the matches, drop a lighted coal into our laps, spill our wine on the white tablecloth. We don’t play the cello, either, but we do ride trains, night trains, winter trains, TGV’s and milk runs whose speed tops out around 45, and whose jostling ride over the beat down American rails rocks us to sleep just before we pull into our station.
Walking to the train you call hear all the men in town approaching. Beneath brogues on the sidewalk thin plates of ice shatter All the men in the fat Russian coats steam like locomotives Élan and canned corn folded in coats, proud necessities. The seats were railroad green, herringbone. 1953 Ike’s first term, I am twelve. It is cold in wool. The appalling beasts I would stand waiting on the platform where the engine always stopped. A rhinoceros, its great plates heaving with each breath. From his eye the engineer looks back on the train steam venting from the condenser. To stand when this Africa, this edifice braked into the station Homburg hatted by dead grandfather waits down the vapored platform to see I don’t go to close to the edge.
We travel past fields of mint, alfalfa and potatoes resplendently green in summer, burned charcoal in autumn, furrowed under in winter. Now before the snow falls, pale golden in the afternoon light before the sun sinks in the valley.
This high desert clime is home to my people. Fifth and sixth generation farmers and ranchers drive their cattle on horseback to the mountains to feed on nutritious sweet grass. Drive them back in the early fall for slaughter or to remain another year, to stand vacantly in fields of snow until spring frees them again.
The Chandlers, the Kerns, the Harrells, the Coomers, the Sextons, the Browns – All hardworking families who not only put food on my table, they give back to their community. They raise their children, send them off to become educated and call them back home to raise their new families.
My daily sojourn gives me the opportunity t reflect on my gratitude for the tenders of vast acres of land, who preserve the natural landscape that I call home.
Did those movie stars know how much their drama of love and loss marked the sterile cotton minds of viewers, those clean white eyes facing a bright screen? How did we know anything, just big kids watching Julie Christie and Omar Shariff tell us about the Russian winter and tortured hearts. So when Anna threw herself beneath the train the image stuck in the green valleys between rock tunes and pedal pusher fashions. The story was almost like history, almost a lesson, almost real until the lights went up and we all left the theater in search of a cheeseburger and milkshake at the drive-in restaurant where girls on roller skates delivered our car window trays. We ate to feed the belly while our crotches leaped ahead to the dark corridors of country lanes and other parking places where young bodies laced together a rushed intimacy, the early explorations. And Anna was still under the wheels of that thundering Russian train, the winter beast coughing up its refuse like a dragon choking on the fairy wearing high heels and Chinese glitter. The world was stretching, taking our white eyes overseas and into jungles where Russia stood behind an imagined enemy. Anna was a fool we said, weak in staying power, in it only for the chadelier days. Or we moaned that Anna had the best idea, preventing a portrait of youth and vigor from fading. Let the train smear it all back to the unspeakable palette of oblivion. I wondered if the woman had left behind a dog, a cat, just a child and a man. Just her story and that Russian winter with the train unforgiving in its allegiance to a set of metal tracks.
I'm standing at the station, anxious, unsure of what I am about to do. I received the notice just under a month ago. A month I've been agonizing over what to do. I was frozen in disbelief for the first couple weeks, but then I remembered I only had one month. My trip will take 5 days and I need to make sure I'm there before my time is up. I hope I'm not too late. I can't be too late. (I really should have taken this seriously much sooner.)
I hear my number called and go out to the platform. The conductor addresses me by name and asks for my ticket. How does he know who I am? My hand is shaking as I hand it to him. I am full of trepidation. Part of me wants to desperately run away but my feet are firmly planted as he punches my ticket and hands it back to me. I step up onto the train gripping the ticket as if I'll dissolve and float away into the void if I let go. I find my seat.
Looking around the car I see such a range of people. Some are sobbing uncontrollably, some are just talking to their neighbors oblivious to the obvious trauma around them. There are babies, the elderly, some teenagers whispering to themselves. As the train pulls out I sit and watch all the people and study their behaviors. It helps to distract. Every day of the trip is the same, I am so bored with the tediousness. I really should have brought something to do, something to keep my mind busy.
Soon we reach a tunnel, there is a large banging sound and the train lurches and shakes. The conductor comes over the PA system and announces we are now on the second leg of our journey. We have entered the land of eternal winter on our way to eternity.
I had never been on a train. Or really even, near a train. It was so big and imposing that I was terrified in that excited sort of way.I had no idea where the train was going. I had walked up to the ticket counter, handed the man behind the window exactly half of my money and said "As far as this will take me". I hate to be cliche, but there you have it, what happened. It wasn't that I was running away. More that I was bored. A long cold winter in the Midwest had taken its final toll on me. I couldn't take another week of being snowed in and staring at empty corn fields. I longed for something not flat, not brown or white. Something with color or texture or even subtle notes of smell. That is the thing about the cold. It can take away smell. It squishes things away until they are just as cold as the cold. I needed more. So, I was standing, bags in hand, hoping that the ticket man had understood that. He had looked like he had, with his hands in his gloves and the scarf up around his nose. He looked like the type of man that understood that the cold will squish him too.
6 comments:
Hurtling through darkness, November.
It’s been raining for three weeks, the fields,
beneath a gibbous moon, shine like lakes,
a few drowned trees reach stark fingers
out of the water. We sit in the bar-car,
empty but for ourselves, the conductor,
the barman. We pretend to read, eavesdropping
shamelessly. They are talking about music,
the conductor plays the cello in amateur chamber
groups and orchestras at both end of his run.
He keeps one cello in Eugene and the other
in Portland, like a man with two wives.
Like a man with two wives,
the conductor is nervous, he checks his face
often in the blurry window of the night train.
He’s different in the south, less refined,
he wears a five-o’clock shadow
and doesn’t bother to brush
the cigarette ash off the front of his suit.
Up north he’s careful, he changes his shirt
before he steps down from the train,
hails a taxi with the insouciance
of the sophisticated city dweller.
The insouciance of the city dweller,
we’ll never have but we sit at cafe tables
wherever we go and watch them with their
valises, their Smart phones, their hair
mussed in that salon perfect way,
their expensive shoes. We’ll always
be hicks, not matter how we imitate
the black clothes, the scarves, even
if we took up smoking again, we’d only
burn our fingers on the matches,
drop a lighted coal into our laps,
spill our wine on the white tablecloth.
We don’t play the cello, either, but we do
ride trains, night trains, winter trains,
TGV’s and milk runs whose speed tops
out around 45, and whose jostling ride
over the beat down American rails
rocks us to sleep just before we pull into
our station.
Winter Train
Walking to the train you call hear all the men in town approaching.
Beneath brogues on the sidewalk thin plates of ice shatter
All the men in the fat Russian coats steam like locomotives
Élan and canned corn folded in coats, proud necessities.
The seats were railroad green, herringbone. 1953 Ike’s first term,
I am twelve. It is cold in wool.
The appalling beasts I would stand waiting on the platform
where the engine always stopped. A rhinoceros, its great plates
heaving with each breath. From his eye the engineer
looks back on the train steam venting from the condenser.
To stand when this Africa, this edifice braked into the station
Homburg hatted by dead grandfather waits
down the vapored platform to see I don’t go to close to the edge.
We travel past fields of mint, alfalfa and potatoes resplendently green in summer, burned charcoal in autumn, furrowed under in winter. Now before the snow falls, pale golden in the afternoon light before the sun sinks in the valley.
This high desert clime is home to my people. Fifth and sixth generation farmers and ranchers drive their cattle on horseback to the mountains to feed on nutritious sweet grass. Drive them back in the early fall for slaughter or to remain another year, to stand vacantly in fields of snow until spring frees them again.
The Chandlers, the Kerns, the Harrells, the Coomers, the Sextons, the Browns – All hardworking families who not only put food on my table, they give back to their community. They raise their children, send them off to become educated and call them back home to raise their new families.
My daily sojourn gives me the opportunity t reflect on my gratitude for the tenders of vast acres of land, who preserve the natural landscape that I call home.
Did those movie stars know how much their drama of love and loss marked the sterile cotton minds of viewers, those clean white eyes facing a bright screen? How did we know anything, just big kids watching Julie Christie and Omar Shariff tell us about the Russian winter and tortured hearts. So when Anna threw herself beneath the train the image stuck in the green valleys between rock tunes and pedal pusher fashions. The story was almost like history, almost a lesson, almost real until the lights went up and we all left the theater in search of a cheeseburger and milkshake at the drive-in restaurant where girls on roller skates delivered our car window trays. We ate to feed the belly while our crotches leaped ahead to the dark corridors of country lanes and other parking places where young bodies laced together a rushed intimacy, the early explorations. And Anna was still under the wheels of that thundering Russian train, the winter beast coughing up its refuse like a dragon choking on the fairy wearing high heels and Chinese glitter. The world was stretching, taking our white eyes overseas and into jungles where Russia stood behind an imagined enemy. Anna was a fool we said, weak in staying power, in it only for the chadelier days. Or we moaned that Anna had the best idea, preventing a portrait of youth and vigor from fading. Let the train smear it all back to the unspeakable palette of oblivion. I wondered if the woman had left behind a dog, a cat, just a child and a man. Just her story and that Russian winter with the train unforgiving in its allegiance to a set of metal tracks.
I'm standing at the station, anxious, unsure of what I am about to do. I received the notice just under a month ago. A month I've been agonizing over what to do. I was frozen in disbelief for the first couple weeks, but then I remembered I only had one month. My trip will take 5 days and I need to make sure I'm there before my time is up. I hope I'm not too late. I can't be too late. (I really should have taken this seriously much sooner.)
I hear my number called and go out to the platform. The conductor addresses me by name and asks for my ticket. How does he know who I am? My hand is shaking as I hand it to him. I am full of trepidation. Part of me wants to desperately run away but my feet are firmly planted as he punches my ticket and hands it back to me. I step up onto the train gripping the ticket as if I'll dissolve and float away into the void if I let go. I find my seat.
Looking around the car I see such a range of people. Some are sobbing uncontrollably, some are just talking to their neighbors oblivious to the obvious trauma around them. There are babies, the elderly, some teenagers whispering to themselves. As the train pulls out I sit and watch all the people and study their behaviors. It helps to distract. Every day of the trip is the same, I am so bored with the tediousness. I really should have brought something to do, something to keep my mind busy.
Soon we reach a tunnel, there is a large banging sound and the train lurches and shakes. The conductor comes over the PA system and announces we are now on the second leg of our journey. We have entered the land of eternal winter on our way to eternity.
I had never been on a train. Or really even, near a train. It was so big and imposing that I was terrified in that excited sort of way.I had no idea where the train was going. I had walked up to the ticket counter, handed the man behind the window exactly half of my money and said "As far as this will take me". I hate to be cliche, but there you have it, what happened.
It wasn't that I was running away. More that I was bored. A long cold winter in the Midwest had taken its final toll on me. I couldn't take another week of being snowed in and staring at empty corn fields. I longed for something not flat, not brown or white. Something with color or texture or even subtle notes of smell. That is the thing about the cold. It can take away smell. It squishes things away until they are just as cold as the cold. I needed more.
So, I was standing, bags in hand, hoping that the ticket man had understood that. He had looked like he had, with his hands in his gloves and the scarf up around his nose. He looked like the type of man that understood that the cold will squish him too.
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