McAdam Railway Station

Railway Station 2

Railway Bridge

1

walking away
from Swansea sands

me crossing the bridge
shaking sand
from my sandals

a rare event
Swansea Bay Station
Cline Valley Line
a train at the platform

the station master
blows his whistle
doors close
slowly the train goes
under the bridge

I stand in a cloud
wrapped up
half-blinded
in huge puffs of smoke

filling my lungs
assaulting nostrils and eyes
with the sting of cinders
the stench of burning coal

sting and stench
and that short sharp whistle

they linger and cling
unforgettable
in my mind’s dark corner

Railway Bridge

2

walking away
from Swansea sands

me crossing the bridge
shaking sand
from my sandals

a rare event
Swansea Bay Station
Cline Valley Line
a train at the platform

the station master
blows his whistle
doors close
slowly the train goes
under the bridge

I stand in a cloud
wrapped up
half-blinded
in huge puffs of smoke

filling my lungs
assaulting nostrils and eyes
with the sting of cinders
the stench of burning coal

sting and stench
they linger and cling
unforgettable cobwebs
in my mind’s dark corridors
and never forget
that short sharp whistle


Comment 1:

Me and my writing buddy also discussed linked poems. This is simply a chain in which each poem links back to another one. Yesterday, we wrote about Swansea Sands and how the poem was generated. Today we can look at the linking between that poem and this one, the old railway bridge that crossed the railway lines by Swansea Bay Station, and led back into Swansea, a town in those days, and the Civic Centre. Note, now, that each of those names could generate further links, further poems in the chain.

When we think of the great chain of being, we think of how all things are linked. From the Great Western Railway (GWR), to the Mumbles Railway, to the Cline Valley Branch line, and beyond. Each poem a railway station along the way. Main line, branch line, express train, goods train … links everywhere, and each link encapsulated in a memory of one kind or another. How could we not write poetry about such things?

McAdam Railway Station, in New Brunswick, Canada. 60 trains a day used to stop here. Now the station is a landmark, a memory, a place where ghost trains run and shadowy figures run wild up and down the grass grown tracks where the sleepers sleep, their dreams undisturbed. I could write a book of poems about this station. Wait a second, I already have and Geoff Slater, my painting buddy, decorated it for me with his wonderful paintings and drawings. What more can I say? Each link in the chain, a potential poem. Each stop along the way, material enough for a painting, a poem, or a book.

Comment 2:

So, what happens when we change the photo? What if we add a branch line or two to the original poem? How does this affect our idea of creativity, poetic creativity? What happens when we add a different sketch from my painting buddy’s wonderful set of drawings? Oh-oh, that’s not my painting buddy – that’s a set of graffiti on a passing railway car. Sorry, painting buddy, please forgive me. But hey, wait a minute – de gustibus non est disputando – there is no arguing about taste. Somebody painted that box car and enjoyed doing it. Where does art begin? Where does it end? How formal can it be? How informal? How many railway stations do we stop at? I guess it depends on the length of the journey. But one thing I know, don’t get off the train until you reach your destination!

Railway Bridge

Railway Bridge

walking away
from Swansea sands

me crossing the bridge
shaking sand
from my sandals

a rare event
Swansea Bay Station
Cline Valley Line
a train at the platform

the station master
blows his whistle
doors close
slowly the train goes
under the bridge

I stand in a cloud
wrapped up
half-blinded
in huge puffs of smoke

filling my lungs
assaulting nostrils and eyes
with the sting of cinders
the stench of burning coal

sting and stench
and that short sharp whistle

they linger and cling
unforgettable
in my mind’s dark corners

Comment:

Me and my writing buddy also discussed linked poems. This is simply a chain in which each poem links back to another one. Yesterday, we wrote about Swansea Sands and how the poem was generated. Today we can look at the linking between that poem and this one, the old railway bridge that crossed the railway lines by Swansea Bay Station, and led back into Swansea, a town in those days, and the Civic Centre. Note, now, that each of those names could generate further links, further poems in the chain.

When we think of the great chain of being, we think of how all things are linked. From the Great Western Railway (GWR), to the Mumbles Railway, to the Cline Valley Branch line, and beyond. Each poem a railway station along the way. Main line, branch line, express train, goods train … links everywhere, and each link encapsulated in a memory of one kind or another. How could we not write poetry about such things?

McAdam Railway Station, in New Brunswick, Canada. 60 trains a day used to stop here. Now the station is a landmark, a memory, a place where ghost trains run and shadowy figures run wild up and down the grass grown tracks where the sleepers sleep, their dreams undisturbed. I could write a book of poems about this station. Wait a second, I already have and Geoff Slater, my painting buddy, decorated it for me with his wonderful paintings and drawings. What more can I say? Each link in the chain, a potential poem. Each stop along the way, material enough for a painting, a poem, or a book.

A Good Friend

A Good Friend

Sitting at the kitchen table, sitting with my friend, Geoff Slater. He drove up from Bocabec to see me and help me sign some books. We have published several collections together – McAdam Railway Station, Scarecrow, Twelve Days of Cat, Tales from Tara, The Nature of Art and the Art of Nature, and The Water Tower.

Scarecrow and Twelve Days of Cat contain Geoff’s drawings and my prose and poetry, while The Water Tower is composed of Geoff’s photos, taken while completing the repainting of his wonderful mural, adorning the water tower in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea. Today we signed copies of Scarecrow, Twelve Days, and McAdam. I have been very lucky with most of my literary and artistic friendships. It always gives me great pleasure to receive my friends at home and to talk away the hours on the chiming clock.

I also enjoy cooking for them, and today I made a delicious paella with ham, chicken, and shrimp. More important, the rice – I had a packet of Bomba Spanish paella rice, and what a difference that made to the cooking of one of my favorite dishes. The socarrat, that crispy layer that coats the bottom of the frying pan or paella was simply wonderful!

Writing can be a lonely life. What a blessing is a good friend, totally creative, off whom one can bounce ideas, exchange artistic stories – our narratives as we call them – and even collaborate on the creation of more art works. Geoff Slater – line-painter extraordinaire – I salute you!

Heraclitus

Geoff Slater’s mural at McAdam Railway Station. ‘You cannot step in the same river twice.’ Heraclitus.

Heraclitus

Nothing will ever be
as it was before.

Time, like water,
like these people marching,
constantly flows,
trickling through my fingers,
uncatchable, unstoppable,
 sand filtering through
the hour glass’ waist.

Water flows, currents shift,
rocks wear down,
banks slide and fall.

“You cannot walk
in the same river twice
nor ever attend
the same demonstration.”

Nor can you recapture
that first, fine, careless rapture,
the touch of that first
drop of river water.

Kneeling by the river bank,
like St. Kevin and his Blackbird,
I cannot recall the river’s name.

Comment: I love the reality of the river, its impressionist style of flowing water, impossible without the enormous presence of Claude Monet and his portraits of the Seine. However, what makes the mural, for me, is the brutal reality that breaks into the painting’s unreality. The boards covering the interior wall, the hand rail blended into the painting, the skirting board, the electric socket. I also like the intertextuality: art speaking to poetry, poetry replying to art, the links to Heraclitus, poetry speaking to poetry, the anonymity of the river, and the further poetic links to Robert Browning and Seamus Heaney. I often wonder if readers and viewers pick these things up. Or do they just speed-read, link to their own experiences, and move on with no further thought? You tell me. But what I will tell you is that artists reaches out to art, poets extend their hands to poetry, and our world is an inter-connected maze of thoughts and ideas, linking and unlinking, occurring and re-occurring, lapping like an incoming tide at the fingers and toes we immerse in those amniotic waters, often so long-forgotten, in which our creativity is berthed and from which it is born.

Chance Encounter

Chance Encounter
Overheard one night at the bar

“Meeting her, unexpected,
with another man, that night,
and me, with another woman,
all four of us looking
bemused by what the other
had chosen in each
others absence

… time suspended …

and the halted, faltering
politeness of a nod,
a handshake, ships
passing in the night,
signs and signals
no longer recognized.”

Ffynon Wen

McAdam Railway Station drawn by Geoff Slater

Ffynon Wen

Stuffy, you said. I can’t breathe. Early morning mist scratched pale finger nails down your bedroom window. Grey foggy faces glanced in, grimaced and scowled. Damp and slippery, the window frame, when I opened the sash. What time is it?  Before I could answer, you demanded more milk for your tea. I left you there, in bed, went downstairs to the kitchen and brought back milk. Then you wanted more sugar. Shut the window, you said. It’s cold. I’m shivering.
Puppet on a string, I raised my cord-bound feet and danced at your command. Then I went downstairs, fetched more sugar, came back, and left the morning paper on your bed. On the front page, a picture of the last passenger engine, green and rusty, from the GWR (Great Western Railway). It used to carry passengers from Swansea to Cardiff to Paddington in London. Now it pulls a line of filthy coal trucks. Covered in dirt, rain, steam and dust, I couldn’t make out the name or the number.
Passengers on trains speeding to different destinations, we never had time, time for talking, time for understanding, time to think, time to be heard. Laden with baggage, our minds followed different tracks. Platform lights blazed in the night, a Van Gogh blaze of starry fires. We flashed past towns, stations where we’d never stop. Windows glowed in deserted waiting rooms, shattering the darkness, their full moons reflected in the double glass of a locked carriage door.
We rattled over cross-tracks, never knowing why, yet I have never forgotten the rhythm of the wheels, slowing, accelerating, running at full speed, the telephone wires looping, cattle in fields grazing peacefully, wondering why …
We rarely talk. I guess we have little to say. We leave big questions to float in the wind. We don’t tell our nightmares, our stories or our dreams. Trivia is too trivial. Serious issues cut too deep, unspoken, unanswered to this day. We bury our noses in the daily paper. We gloss our lives away. We flash past so many signals with their pointed mechanical signs.
When your train finally stopped, I disposed of your body in Thornhill Crematorium, opposite the Ffynnon Wen, the White Well Restaurant and Bar where we celebrated our last supper together.

Comment: An old story, resurfacing from the Archives in which I found my old, dusty Cambrian Chronicles. It’s also a story I have reworked many times, as poem, flash fiction, philosophical statement, personal memoir … I guess such moments, such memories, are very hard to come to terms with. They lie just out of sight and gnaw at us at night, surfacing when least expected and packing a powerful punch of helpless hopelessness. And no, there is nothing we can do about such things except stare blank-faced into our moon-faced morning coffee and blink back the tears we were unable to shed at the time.

I guess, deep down, it’s all about grieving and how we grieve. In some cultures, it is all about manhood and stiff, upper lip. In others, it is letting the tears flow and the emotions run riot. It differs with each and all of us for we and our circumstances are all unique. I look at the current state of the world and I keep thinking that, no, it’s not a case of one size fits all. Not everybody is the same, and each one of is special, and needs something special, especially in these difficult times. Keep safe, keep well, and do not provide, if you can avoid doing so, any reason for your loved ones to mourn for you.

Keys

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Keys

“Thirty-four doors and a key for each door,
sometimes two, and that’s only for the outside.
No master keys back then. A key for each lock,
if you please, and each door locked every night.
It’s still quite the task, a real responsibility. They
kept a turnkey, in those days, a full-time employee
whose job was to keep the keys and remember
which key fitted each door. Was it a double turn,
a single turn, a dead-bolt? The turnkey knew them
all. He also understood the interior doors and had
to wind the clocks, open and close cabinets, cloak
rooms, kitchens, desks, cupboards, drawers.

Others kept their own keys, and we often dismiss
them as lackeys, especially if they were black,
but they held the key to everything. Locksmiths
too, they could remove locks, take them apart,
cut keys, no job for a flunky. It took a smart man
to be a turnkey. He needed training, patience,
skills, knowledge, strength. Huge railway keys:
he knew how to look after them as well. Have you
seen the size of those old, brass carriage keys?”

Unveiling

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Unveiling
McAdam Railway Station
Sunday, 30 June 2019

Today at 1:00 pm is the unveiling of Geoff Slater’s mural and diorama at McAdam Railway Station. In celebration of the Event, Geoff and I put together a little chapbook of poems on McAdam illustrated with two drawings of the railway station, , a photo of Geoff working on his mural, and another of him framing a portrait of yours truly, painted by Ruby Allan and framed by Geoff.

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We are hoping for a nice group of people to attend the unveiling. There will also be a summer fashion show with some of the leading station ladies present.

IMG_0835.JPGI am sure a great time will be had by all and everyone is invited. Of course, not everyone will turn up, but I am sure that these two beautiful ladies will be there.

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The Joy of A New Book

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The Joy of a New Book

Very little to beat it actually, the joy of receiving and opening a new book, especially when it is one you have written yourself, in cooperation with a group of friends. In this book are the twenty-four (24) poems that I wrote for McAdam Railway Station.

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I went to McAdam to watch Geoff working on his mural and installation (diorama). While there, I heard stories about the railway and started to write them down in stanza form. While I did write them, most of them were based on stories and anecdotes heard or overheard while the guides were guiding the tourists round the site. This is indeed a limited edition. We originally intended to print only 50 copies, but when we heard that there might be up to 300 people at the unveiling of Geoff’s mural, in McAdam, at 1:00 pm, Sunday, 30 June, 2019, we doubled the number of books we printed. I will be donating the majority of the 100 to McAdam Railway Station Historical Association. They can either give them away or sell them to help fund and support the impressive restoration work they are doing.

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“We view history through the rear-view mirror of a rapidly advancing car” … and writing these poems was a veritable journey back into the past. Geoff left his glasses by his half-finished drawing, and that’s when the idea of linking McLuhan to Moore to McAdam occurred. Several of the poems focus on my own experiences of railway stations. Travel by train was a frequent choice in my childhood and  I went almost everywhere by train. A local in-town train ran from the station at the end of our road and I often took it when visiting friends, shopping in town, or following the local soccer team, Cardiff City, aka the Bluebirds. As a result, much of the imagery within the poems involves my own knowledge and love of trains, while the narrative structures themselves are often based on those overheard words.

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We wanted a photo of Geoff and me on the back cover and I discovered this one in my files. The portrait was done by Ruby Allan, my fellow artist in KIRA (June, 2107). She painted Roger Writing in the Red Room from a photo taken by another KIRA resident artist, Carlos Carty, the Peruvian pipe, as I was working at the desk in my room. Geoff framed the portrait and Mrs. Lucinda Flemer gracefully allowed it to be hung over the desk in the Red Room at KIRA, an honor for which I am exceedingly grateful. What a nice way to put our pictures on the cover of our book! If you are down McAdam way this Sunday, 30 June, drop in and see us. We’ll be there. Books and all.

 

 

Mannequins

 

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Mannequins
McAdam Railway Station #12

“He startles the unaware, that man by
the door, in uniform, with his youthful
looks and old-fashioned peaked cap,

fingers poised by his silver watch chain
ready to pull out his Waltham pocket watch
and check the time against the master-clock.

Two ladies wait in the waiting room.
One wears winter robes of red and black
while the other wears velvety green. Both

are motionless, one seated, one standing. Yet
if you watch them from a corner of one eye,
you will see shadowy gestures as their lips move.

Overnight they have changed into summer
clothes, gauzy, almost see-through, flowery
patterns, light-weight wedding boots, laced,

restful, cool, thin-soled. ‘Are you for real?’
I ask the standing one, for a joke. When she
nods and winks, a chill settles over the room.”

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