The Monday Mo(u)rning Train

This class was for the somewhat early-risers. A creative beginning-of-the-work-and-wonder-week jump-start.  The sensory inspiration came from two settings: train tracks and a cemetery. We started with sound, touch, and taste (hot coffee, crackly-wrappered, sticky, Ines Rosales Seville Orange Sweet Olive Tortas) and continued with smell and sight (the rain, rusty railroad ties, planted and plastic flowers, granite, lichen). Jamieson found a pile of rusty J-shaped railroad shells or bones and the sky looked like marble.

Kim Britt writes…

INTERSECTION

At the intersection

lie the tracks.

Jagged granite rocks

mound up to reach the rails

elevated and linked,

step after step after step,

by tar slicked ties, pitted and rotting between the lines.

Rusty iron stakes anchor them down,

bracing for the oncoming train,

crying out and wailing as the weight of each car rolls over them.

Then lapsing back into mournful silence.

At the intersection

lie the people.

Here smooth, cold granite

etched with titles: mother, father, son, colonel

are lined up,

step after step after step,

under moss draped oaks and stoic pines.

The ground, soft and giving

muffles out the intrusion of life.

Plastic, mud soaked flowers hold vigil in defiant rage,

as aphids and ants build homes and families

in the lichen that grows in stone roses

and forgotten dates.

Be on the lookout for a future Destination Journal that involves an actual train trip as part of the experience. As always, the senses and the spaces will inspire the work contemplated or created. In the meantime, next stop for DJ,  The Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Florida.

April is National Poetry Month. Take a look, a sniff, or a snippet of something around you. Pen a poem in your Destination Journal.