poolpoem #5
there’s a strange bird that lives
by the pool at the Y
I’m hoping to glimpse her
but she’s very shy
they’ve posted her name
and it hints at her call
I’ve looked but can’t find her
in sibley at all
I’m sure she must wade
where the water is shallow
pray when will I spot you, dear
O
DIVING
HALLOW
© Jacqueline Jackson 2006
I’ve never loved a man who didn’t smell of metal and smoke. Though I’ve sunken below it and risen above it, I’m still a blue-collar person at heart. I’ve inspected peas at a canning factory, breathed paper dust and seal gum from the end of an envelope machine. I’ve watched car seat cushions bake up like biscuits in their hot molds and trimmed the burnt bubbles off them. I’ve screwed the right rear wheel onto fresh-painted lawnmower housings and attached drag plates on an assembly line. Didn’t love it, but sometimes I miss it, miss the concrete-ness of work that you can see stack up in front of your eyes, miss the grit and the air that you can smell, miss the people who keep coming back to a job every day that gives nothing back but a paycheck that’s always too small. My work now is in bits and bytes. It’s nothing you can stack on a pallet and move with a forklift.
You don’t have to know that life to love a train, but the metal and the smoke, the grit and the grinding gears have that same rusty authenticity. The shabby backsides of houses and the mass graves of rusted vehicles pass by like images in a View-Master and inspire poets such as Barbara Olson. — Carol Manley, guest editor
Riding the Rails in America (Springfield 2001)
I am riding the rails in America,
Riding the rails home.
On steel tracks that slice through the city,
From No. Grand to So. Grand,
Past work stations for the poor,
Abandoned depots,
Tracks elevated at the Capitol in salute,
The train arrives at the edge of town.
I am riding the rails in America,
Riding the rails home.
Carillon bells clank among the octaves,
Flinging iron against a face of tin,
Steel against cheeks of brass.
While a cement truck grinds its slur,
Gears crank, grinding back and forth,
To pour a fragile bridge
Where a dusty girl,
reeking of the city,
Thrusts her legs up to the knees
In the cool scum of the duck pond.
I am riding the rails in America,
riding the rails home.
How different you are,
How utterly alien and foreign to my nature.
Intending to be friend,
I am befriended,
The poet’s words,
clay for the potter.
Riding the rails in America,
riding the rails home.
Barbara Olson is a Springfield writer and a traveler who is continually trying to reconcile the diverse images that compete for her attention.
Send submissions to Jacqueline Jackson Presents People’s Poetry to poetry@illinoistimes.com or to Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256, Springfield, IL 62705.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2006.
