Poem to the End of My Days
Selections from Rondo Two: Transport
Jacob Russell
A transport one cannot contain
May yet a transport be – E.D.
September, 2010
It was a long & difficult journey …
…snow everywhere, outcome uncertain, lights in the window of a single
house beside the abandoned tracks play across the fields
Think of this as a movie
a young widow is rocking a cradle but the child is unresponsive
in the movie we would make love
she would serve (me) warm milk
but how can we make love beside a dying child
(I) wait so long before (I) dare to knock we both grow old in the
interim
the child recovered long ago & owns a café in Vancouver
she holds a letter to the light it was not what she expected
It's so easy to misread the signs
we should have gotten off at the last exit moths splatter on the
windshield miles to go before we can turn around she is
beside (me) as (I) drive but
(I've) forgotten her name
she reassures (me) it's not unusual to dream of your parents
long after they've died
(I) live in a city but (my) dreams are
of forests & lakes
(I) arrive at an abandoned railroad station
cornflowers grow between the ties
an ancient locomotive blacks out the sun
February 22, 2011
I have learned that I can breathe …
…but the smallest part & learn from that
to make do without sinking back into my own
absence
The train itself endures moribund in spite of all
we have left undone even after the snow has melted & the wars
have faded into the distance in the quiet of a new morning
we trace their form with our fingers like braille
Aztec patterns on station walls art deco
letters impressed in the same clay as we
ourselves as we might once have
wished
to become
February 22,2011
Though we appear to remain in place…
…horizons recede & advance lakes forests, cities as fields
of light from the observation deck appear &
conductors move from car to car having long since abandoned their uniforms
crumbling pyramids encrusted with vines
to remind us
like the gods who once ascended & descended their steps
we have no home in the world
no distant star beckons us thither
In the waiting room &...
...the blue lights & embarkation delayed & your bags at your feet &
the bus to the wrong city outside the window
& the man from Texas telling yet again the same story &
the announcer droning on in a language you can't make out...
...but who is to say --
who is to say
what city is right or tell you where to get off --
or what wholly unanticipated byway far from the beaten path will
turn out to be the very place you have seen these past thousand & one
nights
in your dreams only to be forgotten by morning & recognized here
for the first time here
in this place
here where you have
never in your life felt more alone or further from what anyone has ever
called home?
February 25, 2011
Her best assets ...
,,, were my undoing...
how was I to know riding the rails, how years
would interweave their fables
the luminous burst over the desert
that radiant simile
for all that comes undone
no metaphor obsidian blade
heart in hand
priests of the sun
resurrected
So said the old man...
... in the isle seat pushing off a second shoe with his stockinged
foot I've raised four shires my three girls & Cesar-Romero 18
hands at the shoulder pull three loaded freight cars without breaking
a sweat gentle as a lamb lest you should be so foolish as to stand
tween him & his desires in a season of love
Any Mild Day in February
Seasons are always passing & …
…enduring changing & always the same like the kitchen
where you made coffee this morning where you sat as a
child when it was snowing & now the snow is almost gone
as though you were moving from one climate zone to another
which in a sense you are think of the planet as a train in
space dragging time in its wake or a sailing ship not driven
by but enveloped in the solar wind imprecise as any metaphor
Imprecise as any metaphor...
...the way all kitchens have come to conform to a model
whose origin it’s possible to locate precisely in history but
no longer in space or time just as & no more than the moment
remembered now only as a general idea when you heard the
kettle whistle on the stove & the cat leapt from your knee as
you rose cup in hand & the porter gazed from the Pullman car
at fields of stubble corn glinting like cut glass in the afternoon
sun not far from Dongola Illinois in 1906 your grandfather
watching from a stand of bare trees where he’d been hunting
rabbits
Where he'd been hunting rabbits...
not all that long ago thinking of his mother in the kitchen by
the stove& realizing how hungry he is the two rabbits warm
against his leg where he’d tied them to his belt & knowing
he would have to clean them before he could sit down to
eat because of the unseasonably mild air for a day so very
late in February
1957
Where every journey ends, she said…
…that beatific smile in answer to my
fill in the blank
space
to represent the sky – blue-black at night accidental lineament of stars –
the feathered priest ascending stone by stone bright points of light
at hip at heel at hand – all parts to fade with dawn
faiful servant Silverheels will take what roles he can – Power
too must hide his want – the double-play dealt out to setting stars
making out at drive-ins – grandmother’s 52’ Chevy not far from where
we’ll all be buried when the game is up
Journal: U.S. 80, July 1988
Youngstown sky like a water color still wet...
… farms & factories cranes jutting up through the mist a bank of
cloud crossing the Meander river
daylit landscape spills out across Ohio
tiles in men's room Ohio Turnpike like cross sections of organs
micro-photos blood cells red with tint of
iodine coffee apple turnover
quart of oil
16 miles to Toledo
misty & overcast after night of rain
home trip drive alone with trailer last of my parent's
worldly
behind my father's
Buick
Skyhawk
funeral was Tuesday