Trains in Winter by Jay Meek

Trains in Winter

by Jay Meek

Over first coffee, I ride the diner and look out at snow fallen deep in gorges.  At winter stations, a locomotive can freeze to the rails, and a mountain night turn so cold it makes the rails snap.  Some trains in heavy snow overtake a moose herd along a roadbed, then sweep a few cows into a ravine, or maybe a bull crossing a trestle will go on through, catching his legs between the ties.  I've seen icebergs melting in a Newfoundland cove, their fresh water icing to a clear glaze.  I've heard of sister ships passing at sea, on their last crossing, while on deck a few passengers wave.  Tapestries in smoking rooms, shipboard mysteries.  There is so much tonnage to our lives, as if civility required an enormous effort, if only for a little sweetness, a little wine.

Hope's the pure country I was born to, where trains run on schedule in their periodic and beneficent sadness.  I want to forget the casual insults that often pass for humor, and imagine the letters lovers might write, or the letters friends send every winter as their sentences cross the distance of the page.  Their words are like a train arriving in Los Angeles while another train approaches the desert, and still another leaves the Chicago yards.  Tonight I want to lie in my bed and listen to trains moving across America toward a place still humanly possible, desirable if difficult, a day's journey away.

I have been so lucky in my life as far as poetry mentors. Some have been teachers that I have known over years. Others have been leaders in workshops lasting a week, a few days, or even a couple of hours. One of my cherished mentors is Jay Meek, the author of today's poem, which is something of an appreciation of trains, a feeling I share.

This prose poem was written and published back when prose poems were controversial. You can still hear people say that there is no such thing as a prose poem, but back in the 1990s, those voices were more numerous.

I like how this poem places us immediately--the dining car of a train. From there, we get some interesting facts about trains in winter, including a bit of horror relating to trains and moose. The speaker returns with some firsthand observations branching out to ships and icebergs, including this wistful aside: " Tapestries in smoking rooms, shipboard mysteries."

The first paragraph ends with this haunting note:

There is so much tonnage to our lives, as if civility required an enormous effort . . .

I love how the winter trains moved to ships and icebergs and moved again to the speaker's rumination about society.

The second paragraph is more personal and lifts us up from the heaviness of that last line starting with the first word, hope. The speaker acknowledges the troubling world but states that he wants to trade love and joy for a very specific sadness, "the casual insults that often pass for humor." This detail is so specific that it hits harder than anything less so would have done. It is one of those moments in poetry when we readers can relate to something in the poem so strongly that it makes us catch our breath.

The examples provided for goodness are also specific, although both are letters. The first mentioned are love letters. The second are, like "the casual insults that often pass for humor," very specific: letters between friends who do not live close to one another and are written in winter. And that image allows the speaker to compare these letters to trains, all three of them at different stations and at different points in their routes.

The poem ends with, again, a bit of hoipe and a bit of wistfulness. The speaker wants to spend the night listening to trains on their journeys throughout the U.S., moving towards places that--and now we move from the literal to the figurative--a place where that earlier-mentioned civility exists. The speaker admits that it is a desirable place, difficult to get to, always a day away. But it is "humanly possible." There's that hope again.

I knew Jay when I was getting my Ph.D. at the University of North Dakota. I took the train from Grand Forks to other places a few times; Amtrak stops there at 2:10 am. If you have ever been to North Dakota, you know it can be very cold there in winter (and winter in North Dakota starts earlier and lasts longer than many other places). The middle of the night, the open air station surrounded by nothing but flat prairie . . . that is a kind of cold that inspires poems! I am not sure what is least surprising--that Jay wrote a poem about trains in winter or that it is one of my favorite poems of his.

Jay died in 2007. Besides leaving behind his lovely family and scores of of friends, his poetry books are still of this world, a small way of keeping him close. You can find his books on Amazon (and better yet, you can most likely order copies at your local bookstore) and this link will take you to his Wikipedia page. Again, I was extraordinarily lucky to have studied with him and been his friend. And lucky you for getting the chance to read his poetry!