The rocks rise up just like Jehovah scat,
vast droppings from the great mad God above.
The train won’t stop. I don’t know where I’m at.
I might be lost. I might have been kidnapped.
The train’s so cold I’m wearing gloves.
The rocks rise up just like Jehovah scat,
but they’re not visible on my little map.
The lounge car is the only home I have
because the train won’t stop. Where I’m at
is a deeply pleasing dizzy place, perhaps
because I’m reading The Sheltering Sky, which I love.
The rocks rise up just like Jehovah scat
on these Great Plains! Foothills! The snow, like sand,
obscures the tracks. How do we even move?
The train won’t stop. I don’t know where I am
with all my wonder wander wonder shit.
I’ll be home for Christmas soon enough.
The rocks rise up like Jehovah scat.
The train won’t stop. I don’t know where I’m at.
____________
Christmas 1989 I rode the Empire Builder train from Whitefish, Montana to Chicago and then the train they call the City of New Orleans on down into Southern Illinois. It was a miserable trip. There was a lot of snow and it was very cold (in North Dakota? Who could have expected that?) and the bathrooms kept freezing up. We stopped at every station, trashed the bathrooms, and by the time I got to St. Louis, the train was more than 24 hours late. You can keep your romantic train travel visions to yourself, thank you very much.
Unless you’re Laura Gibson, in which case I feel so lucky to have caught your show at The Shitty Barn. (Sometimes I can’t stand how lucky I am to live in Spring Green. The barn’s just a short walk from my house.)
Her new album is called Empire Builder, and as she sang the title track, I was reminded that I’d tried and tried to write a poem that captured the weirdness of that train trip. Given my track record of poems about that trip (#27yearsoftrying), I may still not have done it. But I got inspired whilst Laura was singing and wrote it all, there (almost all–revised some when I got home).
So thanks to the Shitty Barn & thanks to Laura Gibson for a great night and a little fit of inspiration. Have a listen to her song “The Cause” and see if you get inspired your own self.
Oh, how I love thee, Shitty Barn.
marniere 