THE WHISTLE OF TRAINS

Sketch by Billie Perkins

An artist gave the above sketch to me to accompany a little feature I was writing for The Daily Iberian back in the 70’s. It’s a rendering of the platform and partial front of the train station here in New Iberia, Louisiana, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The platform and tracks are owned by BNSF and have also been used by the Louisiana and Delta Railroad since 1987.

According to Leo Marx, author of The Machine in the Garden,  the railroad’s development didn’t have any particular meaning for the southern states during pre-Civil War times because the South was enamored of a pre-industrial pastoral ideal which Marx claimed southerners used as a weapon against industrialism. However, the Civil War provided unexpected liberation for southerners to get on the road to modernity, and Georgia led the way in the performance of southern railroads. Railroads were soon established in the post-antebellum South, and by 1890, historian Edward Ayers observed that nine out of every ten southerners lived in a railroad county, “surrounded by an aura of glamour throughout the New South era.”

In Louisiana, depots became the sites of frenetic activity where one northerner related his privileged treatment at a Louisiana depot: “Here we are at the depot and oh, what a collection of porters, cabmen and Car men, Irish, Americans, and Blacks.”* Actually, New Iberia’s first passenger train from New Orleans didn’t arrive until 1879, and a few years later a spur was laid to Avery Island and Abbeville. The railroad became vital to the lumber business and was used to transport cypress from the swamp to landowners who built many of the handsome homes along the Bayou Teche.

In the early 1900’s, my Great-Uncle Ed Greenlaw laid a private railroad track leading from his property in Ramsey, Louisiana to my Grandfather Paul’s lumber mill in Franklinton, Louisiana, transporting long leaf pine logs approximately 28 miles. When he sold the property after he had denuded the forests around Covington, Louisiana, he had the audacity to pick up the rails and take them with him, according to the present owner of the property that is now a bed and breakfast destination.

I have no idea how many trains passed on those first laid rails to New Iberia, but today I look up numerous times during the day when I hear them whooing on the tracks. I also hear them rumbling through at any time I wake during the night. Their long whistles used to sound like lonesome wails to me, but when I wake in the darkness now and hear them, I think of mobility – of going places and having new adventures, of still being able to travel.

In A Lonely Grandmother, one of the books of poetry I published last year, the lead poem is about a train:

The Aging Express

The sound of so many journeys

passes in the whistle of a train

and little wonder

this master of navigation wails,

pushing through sleeplessness

and darkness without news.

Shut-in passengers urge it on

thinking it a boundary-less machine

traveling on an open frontier

carrying them past houses

with open windows

crying ‘welcome aboard'

and rumbling through the night

making connections

in desolate places…

but not stopping for long.

*Most of the information about the history of railroads in this blog was derived from Railroads in the Old South by Aaron W. Marrs, a book I used while doing research for my book, Redeemed by Blood.

“THE LEAVES OF LIFE KEEP FALLING ONE BY ONE…”*

Wet patio, swept clean

The day after Christmas I go outdoors at 7:30 to sweep up wet leaves on the patio. I’m sweeping with an old broom, which should symbolize something, but, for me, the age of this bundle of straw only indicates a certain reluctance on my part to spend money on a new outdoor broom, even if the New Year is approaching. My oldest daughter Stephanie says I have obsessive-compulsive disorder because I go out every morning and make sure the patio is cleared of leaves that have fallen from an overarching oak during the previous day and night.

Stephanie doesn’t understand that sweeping is a cleansing exercise designed to clear my mind and heart of anxieties, concerns, fears – all that past and anticipated trash that we humans carry around every day or dream about in the night. Since Louisiana has a good track record for creating conditions that birth wet leaves, I’m passing on to readers the suggestion that sweeping wet leaves is a more effective exercise than sweeping dry leaves and requires a stronger, swooping sweep to get rid of past or anticipated problems.

Squirrels watch me from the safety of a high branch and sometimes pelt me with acorns, which is their attempt at creating problems to replace the ones I’ve swept away, and I shake the broom at them or whack the trunk of the oak so that they scurry across the yard and into the coulee. Since I’m of the age and disposition not to care what the neighbors think about an old woman in her pajamas shaking a broom at squirrels, I carry on until I have a tall pile of wet debris that gives me pleasure to lay at the feet of the oak. This morning I disturbed a frog taking a puddle bath near the edge of the patio, and he leapt away indignant that I’d think he should be sent to join those leaves of negative thought. You can tell from the photo of the oak and leaves on the ground how many worries I carried around in my head and heart last year.

Last year, I published several books of poetry, one of which included a poem about the art of sweeping. In A Lonely Grandmother, I wrote about dust that is stirred up, but I think the poem is appropriate for this blog, even if the subject is about soggy debris that is swept away:

“The Art of Sweeping:”

There was something about the comfort

of provincial stillness I felt

while sweeping Grandmother’s front gallery,

but I was nine, a quiescent stage

behavioral scientists say,

the calm of the known settling

into the slow hours of summer,

a sawmill up the street

humming a monotonous aria.

It was before the many steps ahead

and the arrival of by-and-by.

When I went outdoors to do the task,

bright as a morning butterfly

sweeping away the grains of dust

beneath the scaling swing

and from around the overflowing fern,

I learned a way I would remember

to rid the remains of future suffering,

the broom moving across

a splintered floor,

each whisk clouding the humid air,

and under the yellow needles –

the quiet of old dust.

Happy Sweeping, Happy New Year!

*A line from The Rubáyát of Omar Khayyám. The complete quatrain: “Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,/Whether the cup with sweet or bitter run,/The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,/The leaves of life keep falling one by one.”

FOR RETIREES (OR ANYONE ELSE FOR THAT MATTER)

I'm not one to broadcast what one calls "smarmy information," but I do appreciate a more simplistic way of living as I approach my 80th year this month. This morning, I went outside to check on the progress of a small garden planted recently, and a headline appeared in my mind: "How to "Make Contented." And within five minutes, I had written the recipe, which I share with those of you old enough to appreciate simple notions of living well:

-Plant a herb garden and when the crop appears, use the products in salads daily, remembering how you felt when you saw the first green shoot. Think about how happy it looked;
-Talk to your adult children via telephone, or e-mail them, or send them a card with a handwritten message of love weekly (or daily, if you can). Tell them the birth pains they caused were worth every wrenching moment;

-Each morning tell your significant other or spouse or partner how good life is because you share it with them;
-Get out of bed at daylight and go out on the porch to feel the breath of the universe on your face. If the weather is breezy, go back indoors and stand in front of an old-fashioned space heater to warm your backside;
-Pray for everyone you love and for those who suffer in "mind, body, or spirit." Put yourself at the bottom of your list (but don't neglect self). If you're inclined to meditate, spend at least twenty minutes at this practice. Read the Book of Psalms aloud and try writing your own versions of psalms;
-Unless you're subject to asthma attacks triggered by laughter, laugh a lot and don't be self-conscious about cackling. Tell amusing stories to anyone who will listen to you;
-Read or write one poem a week; peruse one book a month; and keep the best literature beside your bed;
-Eat food that does not come from packages or cans and subscribe to a magazine like The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook: 2,000 Recipes from 20 Years of America's Most Trusted Cooking Magazine
to learn why food needs to be prepared with as much love as your prayers for spiritual growth;
-Eat one small block of dark chocolate three times a week and let it stay in your mouth a few seconds before chewing it and swallowing;

-Drink four ounces of wine before your evening meal unless you've abused this practice;
-Avoid obsessing about the thin man look; just eat healthy and "don't ride on the back of the Ass of Diet/ or feed on the fatback of judgment./ Tend to the sovereignty of the soul..."*;
-See how many medications you can discard and substitute with well-prepared food, eight hours of sleep, and a walk three times a week;
-Even if you don't practice the religion, read Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health and appreciate her devotion to the health of the mind and spirit;
-Show your appreciation for animals, even if you're allergic to animal dander; and if you're not, get a dog or cat and keep it close, vacuuming regularly, in case someone who is allergic to all that hair visits you;
-Find an infant's face in the crowd whenever you shop or eat out and smile at it. Keep staring at it for five minutes and pick it up if the mother allows;

Grandson, Alex Romero
as baby

-Listen to and commiserate with at least one person who relates a "tale of woe" three times a week; reminding that person and yourself of all the blessings of this life, and ask a higher power to bless that person who has related the "tale of woe." Practice empathy;
-Do at least one act of volunteer service a week;
-Listen to Mozart often. And if you don't like Mozart or Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, listen to progressive jazz or Phillip Glass or the Beatles;
-Try opera, even if you laugh when you're supposed to be appreciating the tragic. Watch a soap opera now and then, if only to find a point of identification with the characters;
-Hang art on every wall in your house and celebrate it every day;
-Set your table with all that china and silver you've been hoarding and invite friends over for dinner at least once a month;
-Go to the mountains or the ocean every three months and find a "thin place" where you can access the sacred and the heaven within you, and free yourself of discord;
-Be honest, even if you lose face;
-Know that you're evolving toward happiness and union with a Creative Intelligence;
-Think harmony, do good, and be content;
-Know that this list isn't complete but will do for starters on "making contented;"
-Be glad you're on this side of the grass and that you're here, NOW.

*from A Lonely Grandmother by Diane-Marquart-Moore

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

A LONELY GRANDMOTHER

By the time I get ready to travel to Sewanee, Tennessee this week-end, I hope that the Louisiana monsoons will have abated and won't follow me, and that all will be dry on The Mountain at my arrival. And by the time I've settled into my Sewanee retreat, A Lonely Grandmother, my latest book of poetry, should have made its debut with Border Press Books. It's No. 40 among my book publications, not counting one lost manuscript of a novel that was put away in an attic and the rats must have consumed (it was my raciest endeavor, so...). The new book of poetry will probably be on the market before my 80th birthday in May.

I told a good friend that A Lonely Grandmother has experienced so many birth problems, Grandmother has probably grown lonelier than ever, waiting for her debut. But she's about to emerge, and straight from the publisher's blurb: "A Lonely Grandmother emphasizes that no matter the period in human history, grandmothers have always been important, cherished women in the family constellation. In this volume of poetry, a maternal grandmother calls the poet's family 'a tempest in a teapot,' but is only showing concern for her grandchildren's dysfunctional upbringing. A stern but forgiving figure in the poet's early life, Grandmother Nell comes to realize that "the children grown/Absolutes will not keep her company."

This is a poetic tribute to a grandparent that spans a family history from the poet's childhood to adulthood and ends with a meditative prose piece that serves as closure: "She closed the heavy door behind me. When I reached the sidewalk, I looked up at the cupola on the roof of the old house. A phantom flew out of the window beneath it and disappeared in the sky."

The beautiful cover of A Lonely Grandmother, which depicts the cupola on my deceased Grandmother Nell's Victorian home in Franklinton, Louisiana, is Vickie Sullivan's photograph of a glass piece conceived and rendered by Karen Bourque, an exquisite glass artist from Churchpoint, Louisiana. Cover design is by grandson Martin Romero, who is a landscape architect practicing in New Orleans, Louisiana. Martin is also an accomplished graphic artist.

A Lonely Grandmother is now available online at amazon.com, or from Border Press, PO Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375 for $15 plus $4 shipping and handling.