—Poetry by Kimberly Bolton, Jefferson City, MO
—Photos Courtesy of Public Domain
A SENSE OF SNOW
I come awake this morning startled by the overnight snowfall,
the icy chill of the window causing my fingers to
tingle with cold when I press them to the glass pane.
Outside the world is scoured clean and white.
Snow is not like rain which wakes me out of deep dreams
in the middle of the night, beating a tattoo on
the roof.
So there was really no reason to wake,
To climb out of my warm bed and pad across
the floor
to the window.
Except I sensed the snow before I parted the curtains
to look out.
There was that odd feeling of ‘otherness’ to the morning,
a sense of something having occurred while I slept,
along with the familiar, funereal silence brought on
by heavy snowfall.
The ground is nothing but white, with no perimeters
to show where the landscape begins or ends.
I close my eyes briefly, imagine the scene outside
my window as it looked last June, saturated in green.
Opening my eyes, I see the moon floating like
a piece of ice
in the pale morning sky, just as the sun blinks awake
over the horizon, splintering the crust of snow
into sparkling iridescence.
And the trees, oh, let’s not forget the trees,
bare and bleak and black as cast iron, reaching
upwards,
upwards toward the light.
I come awake this morning startled by the overnight snowfall,
the icy chill of the window causing my fingers to
tingle with cold when I press them to the glass pane.
Outside the world is scoured clean and white.
Snow is not like rain which wakes me out of deep dreams
in the middle of the night, beating a tattoo on
the roof.
So there was really no reason to wake,
To climb out of my warm bed and pad across
the floor
to the window.
Except I sensed the snow before I parted the curtains
to look out.
There was that odd feeling of ‘otherness’ to the morning,
a sense of something having occurred while I slept,
along with the familiar, funereal silence brought on
by heavy snowfall.
The ground is nothing but white, with no perimeters
to show where the landscape begins or ends.
I close my eyes briefly, imagine the scene outside
my window as it looked last June, saturated in green.
Opening my eyes, I see the moon floating like
a piece of ice
in the pale morning sky, just as the sun blinks awake
over the horizon, splintering the crust of snow
into sparkling iridescence.
And the trees, oh, let’s not forget the trees,
bare and bleak and black as cast iron, reaching
upwards,
upwards toward the light.
LICK SKILLET
The Tale of an Old Railroad Town
Where once the railroad stretched from horizon to horizon,
smack-dab through the middle of Lick Skillet,
the new highway has cut off from what mediocre
social standing this small knock-about town
may have had with the rest of the world.
The rest of the world being the larger towns and
metropolitan cities down the road that take three
hours or more to reach by car.
It used to be one of a dozen stops along
The train route between Saint Louis
And Kansas City.
Quaint town with quaint names now long
Defunct and of no use to anybody:
Blue Moon, Dillie, Weeping Mary, Jarvis,
Knee Buckle, and Letty’s Apron.
A motley collection of vacant houses showing
their age, empty even of its ghosts, is all that’s
left of Lick Skillet, with their swayback roofs,
sloping floors, and warped walls bowing inward,
but still holding their own against time.
The old cemetery sits on the outskirts of town,
but no one visits anymore because they are
all here now, gathered like folk
at a town reunion nobody had the heart to leave.
Not even the trains come through anymore,
Having been rerouted decades ago.
Before the railroad, there had been a wagon track
used by old pioneers passing through on their way
out west.
Folks figured that’s how the town got its name.
Pioneers would set their skillets over an open fire
for roasting meat, frying up a piece of fatback,
or baking cornbread, and times being what they
were,
they’d all but lick the skillet clean,
at least that was how the story went.
Some of those pioneers, having done
with the tiresome plodding of horses’ hooves
over long, dry and dusty distances,
and the bone-jarring rattle of wagon wheels,
decided to stop here, calling it quits.
And so the little town gradually came into being.
There must have been a bit of rejoicing when
the railroad came through.
Railroads meant expansion and growth and
business opportunity.
It meant reliable jobs and more money for
everybody concerned.
It meant a real church with a steeple,
and a schoolhouse, a general store,
and a post office.
Some enterprising fella even set up
a bank on what would become the town square.
It meant the town and the people in it
had a future.
Over the years the town survived hard winters,
harsh droughts, and the tornado of eighteen-
eighty-seven
that tore the town to shreds, killing five people
who didn’t make it to their storm cellars in time,
including ole man Cudmore, deaf as a post,
who thought the heavy tremors of the funnel cloud
he felt underfoot was a locomotive charging
through town
and so had come out of his house to wave to the engineer
as he’d done for Lord knew how many years,
only to be picked up by the tornado and flung to kingdom come.
His body was never found and his was the only
plot in the cemetery with a headstone to mark
an empty grave.
Lick Skillet had survived its own small town
scandals,
and its one murder just outside of town between
two farmers in a dispute over land rights,
with one settling the matter then and there,
pointing his rifle at the other across the fence line.
What the town didn’t survive was what everyone
began to call progress.
The young abandoned small-town living
for a larger life elsewhere in the big city,
tempted by better-paying jobs and a standard
of living foreign to the folks back in Lick Skillet.
They was all in a rush to grow money instead
of taters and rutabaga in their own kitchen gardens
out back of the house.
They dreaded the future laid out for them in
a town like Lick Skillet, watching the wear
and tear on their parents and grandparents
from hard living and not a penny to show for it.
And so little by little the young moved out and
moved on,
while the old folk caught up with each other down
the road at the cemetery until there wasn’t anybody
left.
Before it was paved over and the new highway
redirected traffic elsewhere, the old gravel road
running interference with the old railroad track,
rusted with disuse, and hidden by tall grass,
was once the road home.
And Lick Skillet became no more than a boom
and bust town that people and time just
plumb forgot.
The Tale of an Old Railroad Town
Where once the railroad stretched from horizon to horizon,
smack-dab through the middle of Lick Skillet,
the new highway has cut off from what mediocre
social standing this small knock-about town
may have had with the rest of the world.
The rest of the world being the larger towns and
metropolitan cities down the road that take three
hours or more to reach by car.
It used to be one of a dozen stops along
The train route between Saint Louis
And Kansas City.
Quaint town with quaint names now long
Defunct and of no use to anybody:
Blue Moon, Dillie, Weeping Mary, Jarvis,
Knee Buckle, and Letty’s Apron.
A motley collection of vacant houses showing
their age, empty even of its ghosts, is all that’s
left of Lick Skillet, with their swayback roofs,
sloping floors, and warped walls bowing inward,
but still holding their own against time.
The old cemetery sits on the outskirts of town,
but no one visits anymore because they are
all here now, gathered like folk
at a town reunion nobody had the heart to leave.
Not even the trains come through anymore,
Having been rerouted decades ago.
Before the railroad, there had been a wagon track
used by old pioneers passing through on their way
out west.
Folks figured that’s how the town got its name.
Pioneers would set their skillets over an open fire
for roasting meat, frying up a piece of fatback,
or baking cornbread, and times being what they
were,
they’d all but lick the skillet clean,
at least that was how the story went.
Some of those pioneers, having done
with the tiresome plodding of horses’ hooves
over long, dry and dusty distances,
and the bone-jarring rattle of wagon wheels,
decided to stop here, calling it quits.
And so the little town gradually came into being.
There must have been a bit of rejoicing when
the railroad came through.
Railroads meant expansion and growth and
business opportunity.
It meant reliable jobs and more money for
everybody concerned.
It meant a real church with a steeple,
and a schoolhouse, a general store,
and a post office.
Some enterprising fella even set up
a bank on what would become the town square.
It meant the town and the people in it
had a future.
Over the years the town survived hard winters,
harsh droughts, and the tornado of eighteen-
eighty-seven
that tore the town to shreds, killing five people
who didn’t make it to their storm cellars in time,
including ole man Cudmore, deaf as a post,
who thought the heavy tremors of the funnel cloud
he felt underfoot was a locomotive charging
through town
and so had come out of his house to wave to the engineer
as he’d done for Lord knew how many years,
only to be picked up by the tornado and flung to kingdom come.
His body was never found and his was the only
plot in the cemetery with a headstone to mark
an empty grave.
Lick Skillet had survived its own small town
scandals,
and its one murder just outside of town between
two farmers in a dispute over land rights,
with one settling the matter then and there,
pointing his rifle at the other across the fence line.
What the town didn’t survive was what everyone
began to call progress.
The young abandoned small-town living
for a larger life elsewhere in the big city,
tempted by better-paying jobs and a standard
of living foreign to the folks back in Lick Skillet.
They was all in a rush to grow money instead
of taters and rutabaga in their own kitchen gardens
out back of the house.
They dreaded the future laid out for them in
a town like Lick Skillet, watching the wear
and tear on their parents and grandparents
from hard living and not a penny to show for it.
And so little by little the young moved out and
moved on,
while the old folk caught up with each other down
the road at the cemetery until there wasn’t anybody
left.
Before it was paved over and the new highway
redirected traffic elsewhere, the old gravel road
running interference with the old railroad track,
rusted with disuse, and hidden by tall grass,
was once the road home.
And Lick Skillet became no more than a boom
and bust town that people and time just
plumb forgot.
A LINGERING THOUGHT OF GOD
History rides on the back of this river.
Its waters sparkle under the sun with memories.
This is one of the reasons I love it so.
This old river is the great aorta, keeping the heart
of this nation beating.
If it were not here, but somewhere else,
it might still be just as important, or less so,
but our little town snuggled tight against
its banks would wither like fallen fruit.
The wind and the river are constant companions,
always pushing together downstream,
where once pioneers, scarred with hope,
forded its treacherous current
to head west and on through the sea
of tall prairie grass, having left
nothing much behind them, and unaware
of the many heartaches they would plant
in the unforgiving ground.
My people crossed the river and stayed, keeping
it always within their line of vision,
as if it were a talisman they clung to.
And here I am now, today,
standing on its muddy banks,
buffeted by the cold wind,
the river spanning the distance from past
to present, like a lingering thought of God.
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
SnowSong
—Kimberly Bolton
The wind is chillbone cold,
and the air carries the scent of snow
and the sharp tang of cedar.
A constellation of snowflakes sifts down,
Down,
Down,
as if the ice-blue sky is releasing
its weight of stars.
Then the wind catches hold of them,
conducting them into a mad, dense whorl,
until the morning comes alive with snowsong.
____________________
Our thanks to Kimberly Bolton today for her poetry about American history on this, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. And snow!—released like “its weight of stars”—a reminder that winter persists in the Midwest.
The Poets Club of Lincoln will feature Sacramento Poet Laureate Emeritus Jeff Knorr this afternoon, plus open mic. Click UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS at the top of this column for details about this and other future poetry events in the NorCal area—and keep an eye on this link and on the Kitchen for happenings that might pop up during the week.
____________________
—Medusa
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clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
