You can hear me read this poem by clicking on the title or the play button. The image above was created by Lancia Smith, and carries a quotation from my commentary on the poem. You can see this and more on her excellent Website Cultivating the True the Good and the Beautiful.. You can find the words, and a short reflective essay on this poem in Waiting on the Word, which is now also available on Kindle
Rocky Mountain Railroad, Epiphany Luci Shaw
The steel rails parallel the river as we penetrate
ranges of pleated slopes and crests—all too complicated
for capture in a net of words. In this showing, the train window
is a lens for an alternate reality—the sky lifts and the light forms
shadows of unstudied intricacy. The multiple colors of snow
in the dimpled fresh fall. Boulders like white breasts. Edges
blunted with snow. My open-window mind is too little for
this landscape. I long for each sweep of view to toss off
a sliver, imbed it in my brain so that it will flash
and flash again its unrepeatable views. Inches. Angles.
Niches. Two eagles. A black crow. Skeletal twigs’ notched
chalices for snow. Reaches of peak above peak beyond peak
Next to the track the low sun burns the silver birches into
brass candles. And always the flow of the companion river’s
cord of silk links the valleys together with the probability
of continuing revelation. I mind-freeze for the future
this day’s worth of disclosure. Through the glass
the epiphanies reel me in, absorbed, enlightened.
I know exactly what she’s experiencing, and she captures that sense so accurately.
Tried to buy your “Waiting on the Word” in Kindle format from Amazon but it’s only available in the UK to UK customers. Hope it will come to US and Canadian Amazon stores eventually.
I’ll ask my publisher
Sir, this is lovely….just lovely. This line made me sigh, “Yes!”
“My open-window mind is too little for this landscape.”
I live in the Pacific Northwest with a view to Mount Rainier many days and have often felt the scope of it was too much to take in.
Thank you.
Thanks. Luci Shaw is a wonderful poet
Having just traveled by train from Albuquerque to Kalamazoo this Poem takes me back, and I can relive the trip through memory and her words. What a blessing.