Poem for DVerse Poets Poetics Prompt: Trains

What a fabulous prompt brought to us by Claudia at DVerse Poetics Today-- I have long wanted to share an older poem of mine that has had some exposure, but for me is my ultimate "train" poem.....  I look forward to reading all of  yours! xxxj 

Lily Codington, Waking

“These were the least

Of my passions…”

Lily Codington writes

From her seat on the Zephyr

from East to West;

It bores, iron mastodon

Through Utah ranges.

Passengers lean on the panes

And dream:

Gold sleeps underfoot, in the arroyo:

There are silver threads

In the graves.

Lily’s hair is a skein of cinnamon.

She writes, sipping from a cup

In a  pewter holder.

Passing sombrero mountains

She pours from a Rose Medallion teapot

In a wicker cozy lined with pink linen:

Meditation on the Imported Teapot

Wedding Gift from John

The surface pictures are harmonious.

The mandarins court in gardens

Their feet hidden under silk robes.

In pink arbors the brides to be

Are pale, redolent

And gibbons hide in the banyans

It is their mating without temerity

At night in the trees

One hears, above the lute.

By night

In a dance as oblique as dross

They conceive.

Ii

And why then the appearance

Near some of these mouths

Of prayer or anguish

And why the upswing of the pagoda roofs

And the eyebrows’ arch

The track curves down toward the Mojave

Pekoe steams toward the glass

and the wheels throw off sound

from the canyon.

A single hand is so mortal

A familial gnarl of the fingers

Holding cup and pen;

It small and claw-like.

But the privacy of my hand, here

And of my body, away from John?

iii

Do I say a woman sings

No language for our redemption

not poetry

Not pain.  I cannot reach you

With ready speech.

Yet how we once wove our conversation

The marigolds of Amherst

The appetites

Of the Bostonian.

We agreed on love as mercy

As labor toward  an erratic God

We wept near the lilacs parting for war

I promised many gardens

In my heart I said

I would not covet

Possible lives.

 

Yet while you were away

I was moved and restless

I had a seance

In a grove

I was tapping syrup

With Mother, on her cane.

I saw Emily Dickinson, in taffeta

In salt grasses

Striking her breast

Her fists like quartz

And her shoes wet and sagging.

Trying to write on a train

Is like trying to walk in the winds of Boston

With an umbrella open

But I want you to know about our separation

In your face I thought I saw

A spirit both man and woman

I thought by hope or luck

We would leave the parlor

Of our immovable lives

I am impossibly alone at twilight

On the train to San Francisco;

They will hurt me

But how can I hate them

All our hands are restless

And we are all pioneers

Crying out “Vision!”

(This poem was originally published in Wingbone: An Anthology of Colorado Poetry, late 80's, and was the lynchpin of my MFA thesis.).

 copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2011