Poets Salon: Overnight Train

POETS SALON

– 6/19/19

Hosted by Kath Abela Wilson

Eleven hours to Yellow Mountain, a long sequence. One poem laid upon another, inked in the dark. How to untangle them? The singsong rhythm is soothing, and as we arrive, mist covering mountain, lightning and thunder announce our arrival. Later, a moment of clarity, worth the climb.

unexpected reward
most delicous in Spring
young yellow bamboo

~ Kath Abela

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Jacquie Pearce

As a child, I’d often fall asleep at night to the distant whistle of a passing train. It was both a comforting and melancholy sound ─ like a blues riff winding through the darkness. Later, it took on the tone of a summons, or a promise, bound up with all my youthful dreams of travel and romance and endless possibilities. I wanted to travel to Europe right after high school, but practical circumstances kept me stuck in place. Finally, the pull to get away and expand my own boundaries was too great. I took a semester off from university, bought a youth rail pass and set off on a journey across Canada.

night train
the unrolling landscape
behind my closed eyes

Over the years that followed, I became interested in the history and social impact of trains, learned more about my own family’s connection to trains (my maternal grandfather and great grandfathers all worked on trains), and I became fascinated with the unique sense of time, train-board community, and the internal journey experienced on long train trips.

transcontinental─
enough nights
for a sunset ritual

walking the scent
of warm blackberry vines…
abandoned tracks

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John Stevenson

I travel across the US, from Albany, New York to various destinations on the west coast, between once and three times per year. There are always poems that come from the experience, though it’s not always obvious that they are viewed from a moving train. Here are some poems from my most recent trip, to Portland, Oregon.

to the sleeper
the train whistles
far away

underlining low clouds lake erie

on the night train
prairie lights
and a low crescent

seven swans a’swimming in the Mississippi

new in town
the orientation
of the river

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Sigrid Saradunn

So many memories from more than 60 years ago to the present. I come from a “railroad family” …grand-father and uncle worked their ways up to full fledged engineers. Back in 1956 the Braves were in Milwaukee and baseball the rage. Travel was by train from one city to another. My father figured the team would be taking the Hiawatha at a certain time and took my brother and me to the station. Sure enough, like “regular people” there they were sitting on a bench waiting.

a day etched in memory

a sighting of favorite heroes sitting together
waiting to board the Hiawatha to go on to the next city

we walked up, they greeted us, smiled and shook our hands

Henry Aaron, Joe Adcock, Eddie Mathews, Warren Spahn, the list goes on

the train arrived, the conductor’s familiar “All Aboard” heaven sent moment in time

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Benita Kape

I was born beside the main rail line which runs through the centre of the North Island of New Zealand, at a little place called Greatford. I was the only one of several children to be born there. I therefore make special claim to this place. The rail-line line ran one side of our small four roomed cottage and a dear little church across a small field on the other side of our cramped abode. I lived beside that railway station for the first 17 years of my life.

through the day, through the night

the trains chug up the incline
our little house rattling

a playground
a means of transport
a place of learning

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Joan E. Stern

One of my son’s first words was train, and today, at age 42, he is a Federally Certified train engineer, who drives the Fillmore and Western engines on weekends as a hobby.

Railroading

“chasing
steel”—train buff’s theme
being in the right spot
to track mighty iron horses’
rail dreams

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Lois P. Jones

For many years I dreamt I could pass through walls into other rooms. Sometimes, I would stay between the walls in a kind of out-of-body experience perceiving the in-between spaces. Trains remind me of this interstices between the physical and non-physical world. It’s as if we are passing through the world in a temporary fashion on our way to our next destination, a kind of spiritual flip-book.

while speeding along the track
a glimpse of the lake
through blurred branches
time passes quickly
on our way to the grave

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Overnight Train: Quotes and Credits

John Stevenson is a poet traveler who makes his home in Nassau, near Albany, New York. An inspiring haiku poet, he spends many hours of many days, readily traveling by train to conferences, meetings and friends, on many lines, writing many wonderful lines himself.

Jacquie Pearce: “As a haiku poet, I began to notice and collect haiku with train themes, which eventually lead me to compile an anthology of train-related haiku, including submissions from around the world.” Last Train Home, an anthology of haiku, tanka and rengay edited by Jacquie Pearce, will be published in 2020. She lives Vancouver, Canada. Her haiku have won awards and appeared in a variety of publications, including Daily Haiku, Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, Blithe Spirit and The Red Moon Anthology. Most recently, a selection of her poems was published in A New Resonance 11 (Red Moon Press 2019). Jacquie is also the author of several novels for children.

Sigrid Saradunn: “How the years have flown from when train was THE mode of transportation. I’d be put in care of the conductor starting around age 12 and take the train from Milwaukee to LaCrosse, WI, and handed over safe and sound to my grand-father. The sound of train wheels on the tracks, “all-aboard” with passengers loading, the familiar 2 AM sound of train’s crossing Birch Ave, waking the neighborhood then back to sleep still listen for that time keeper of the past.” Sigrid grew up in Northern Wisconsin and now lives in Bangor, Maine.

Benita Kape: “I spent our childhood playing in and around Greatford Station, in New Zealand. They were very special times. Some may have said we were a deprived family in our small house by the station, but for me it was rich in endless countless ways.”

Joan E. Stern: “My husband and I enjoy traveling all over the world, but our favorite trip is our annual, Thanksgiving train ride from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo and back in a couchette with dinner on the rails with our son Ryan, a train engineer, who drives the Fillmore and Western engines on weekends as a hobby.” Joan is a poet and artist who joins Poets on Site for meetings in Pasadena from Malibu, CA each week.

Lois P. Jones is an award-winning poet and radio host of KPFK’s Poets Cafe.

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♣ We welcome and encourage your response, especially in the form of a short poem, by leaving a comment below.

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