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Open Poetry #35
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A Big Thing
| Open Poetry #35 |
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A Big Thing |
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Martie
Moderator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-09-21
Posts 28049California 
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A Big Thing The train passes where back yards are scrambled with stacked wood and rusted discards. Children wave, barefoot in tangled weeds. The man in the house stops talking and holds up his hand mid sentence waiting for an empty space in sound to fill with his conversation. Down the road and over the fence the cow no longer looks up. Her methodical chewing jaw moves with the rhythm of the box car’s turn across the farmlands, and time is measured this way into the evenings of milking. In another place of city streets and yellow buses, the train whistles into a night empty of star’s glow, capturing the open window of a listening child. She had placed a penny just so as the afternoon choked her lungs, placed it on the tracks then knelt down and listened, her ear on the hot metal. She had run many blocks to the tracks so that now she could feel the way the penny flattened and melted from the weight of such a big thing, and in the knowledge is her own changing. As she listens her eyes become heavy, but it is not ‘til all is quiet again, that she smiles into sleep. ---------- 3-30-01 |
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| © Copyright 2005 Martie Odell Ingebretsen - All Rights Reserved | |||
Marge Tindal 
since 1999-11-06
Posts 42384Florida's Foreverly Shores |
MartieSis~ If I didn't know better ... I'd swear you really DID grow up in the same woods, same country setting, same railroad tracks ...~ Oh, that's right ... we're sisters ... of COURSE you did !!! Love this, sweets~ *Huglets*  ~*Marge*~ ~*When the heart grieves over what it has lost, |
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garysgirl
since 2002-09-29
Posts 19237Florida, USA |
Martie, I felt that I was right there looking on. Very good writing, Hon. Hugs, Ethel |
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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354Listening to every heart |
I waited for you on the other side of the tracks... when you slipped the penny into the dreams of a soul. |
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Nightshade
since 2001-08-31
Posts 13962just out of reach |
Your words never cease to amaze and delight me Martie. Wow. hugs, Chris "The soul that can speak through the eyes can also kiss with a gaze." |
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Honeybunch Member Rara Avis
since 2001-12-29
Posts 7115South Africa |
Wow, Martie! You're more than okay! Rather send some of your talent over here ... and I won't even charge. Oh, you'll have to read my reply to you below to understand this comment. |
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Ratleader
since 2003-01-23
Posts 7026Visiting Earth on a Guest Pass |
"Whose image is on this coin?" "Casear's...." "Look again -- is this not the world's image that I see?" "This is the look of Caesar, now...." ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸¸¸ºº> ~~(¸¸ ¸¸ºº> ~~~(¸¸ER¸¸ºº> ______________Ratleader______________ |
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Enchantress Member Empyrean
since 2001-08-14
Posts 35113Canada eh. |
Amazing talent you show here dear Martie. The sights and sounds are fantastic! You took me right there..wonderful! Hugs~Nancy For it was not into my ear you whispered |
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icebox Member Elite
since 2003-05-03
Posts 4383in the shadows |
when I was a little kid I did the penny thing also and was amazed at the transition. So, then one summer, I took back a river of soda bottles and saved until I had 50 cents. I put that coin on the tracks and waited in the trees for the early evening freight train. Well, it came, and d'you know what I learned? I learned that when big money was involved I couldn't trust freight trains! It stole my half dollar!!!!! (OK, so now I am old and know silver melts at a lower temperature and probably it stuck to a wheel; I don't care - I have never trusted freight trains.) ...uh...I liked your poem. *smile* |
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James_A_Fraser Senior Member
since 2003-09-03
Posts 972Out Making Anticlines |
Mine was a silver dollar my grandfather had given me for Christmas. It tried to stick to the wheels but I found it 50 feet or so down the track, turned into something ugly as hate. I brought it home anyway and later I hammered it into a ring that I still have packed away somewhere. There's a poem in that, I think, something about finding beauty. |
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Seymour Tabin Member Empyrean
since 1999-07-07
Posts 31720Tamarac Fla |
Martie, A tale of wonder and awe, I would have more.  |
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passing shadows Member Empyrean
since 1999-08-26
Posts 45577displaced |
you make me want to go try this penny thing they have those machines at Disney World that flatten coins and put your choice of Disney character on them...that was really neat..I have Pooh and Tigger very cool write Martie |
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Dark Angel Member Patricius
since 1999-08-04
Posts 10095 |
Awesome Martie, absolutely... i swear i was there watching. fantastic! a  mxx and i knew in the crystalline knowledge of you |
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Goodknight Member Elite
since 2002-06-15
Posts 2386Ohio, USA |
Martie - I enjoyed this a bunch - glad you posted it again - well I enjoy all you write cause you write so very well - Paul |
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Local Parasite
since 2001-11-05
Posts 2527Transylconia, Winnipeg |
This is quite good, Martie. Your control of the imagery throughout is, as always, masterful; and the rustic is achieved quite easily with the compound images "stacked wood," "rusted discards," "barefoot," and "tangled weeds." I wonder if the second stanza is trying to amplify the familial "country" effect of the whole work, or to give some dualism to the children wandering and the adult indoors? I had a hard time understanding exactly what you meant by that second stanza, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I do like how the cow is used to the sound of the train, but it is taken as such an extraordinary thing by the children listening---that's a neat addition to the contrast between naive child and learned parent, a learned animal who is weighed down by routine. This stanza is almost frightening: quote:Did you intend to give it that sense of parental anxiety, the association of danger with the approaching train, the "hot metal" on her ear? One of my favourite things about this poem. I have to say, and only because your critique flag is up, that I don't think the last line of the second-to-last stanza is necessary. The "message" you're showing there is implied throughout the whole poem so much that the poem would profit in subtlety were it omitted. Just a suggestion. Love reading you, Martie, as always. Brian "God becomes as we are that we may be as he is." ~William Blake |
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LeeJ Member Patricius
since 2003-06-19
Posts 13296 |
Hey Martie, good morning, looks like we came from the same side of the tracks...the RR was in our backyard as well, and we flattened many a penny, nickles, dimes....wish I had one or two of them now...just to feel the change....hehe Love ya  |
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kayjay Member Elite
since 2002-06-24
Posts 2015Oregon |
As a boy, I oftened hopped freights for a few miles of riding to a spot on the Mississippi River. 'Twas one of the many sins that haven't caught up with me. And yes, I too did the penny bit. Thanks for a fine picture of those times. Ken Through rubble and trouble and dark of night |
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Sudhir Iyer Member Ascendant
since 2000-04-26
Posts 6943Mumbai, India : now in Belgium |
wonderfully written piece, this one, Martie... regards sudhir |
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