RIVERS AND TRAINS

on a lonely cold night i often experience the same feeling your portraying there. i think i know exactly where your coming from. nice poem.

You will never be alone with the way you write and think about things. The world will fly through your window and say to you Joe it is a journey and you are part of this world, where do you want to be. You take care in there, and roam at will, Yours Ian.T

I too have a strange wistful feeling when a train goes by in the night, in the black, in the silence, in the emptiness of space, where one's dream-world steps off the edge into nothingness at first; lying, as you say, warm and safe under the bedclothes, one can wander into the darkness of the mind without feeling the cold and this shows up the contrasts, containment at the same time as the atmosphere of an unknown journey ahead, away into the future of our thoughts, the snaking train on its tracks, on the map of the landscape-questioning, wondering. Yes that's what the sound of the night train brings to me. In my village as a child I had the railway not far away and early in the morning the freight trains would start bumping each other along the line and back again, or so it sounded. Used to the early morning sounds mixed with my childhood dreams they have no doubt coloured my feelings later in life too. This all sounds clumsily put but you get the gist? In a dreamy mood from Ann of Norway

among other things and when I write am using my observant ear and eye to make poetry of my writing, in prose or poetry. Yes I have seen that you can laugh, and I shall respond but need a little time to do so for that Joe. Oh I suddenly think of the old chuffer-trains and their steam and whistles and coal shovelling and nostalgia.....! They were the much loved dragons of the industrial revolution, in spite of the bits of soot that came throught the windows on ones clothes and the jerking about, we found them lions of power. Didn't we? Love Ann

river swimming for me we didnt do we swam in our lake tannic stained waters with leechs black and orange sided interesting things Made it all the more lively getting to the raft and back the bottom full of old sawdust from the mill long long ago gone stumps would wash up cut off peices worn and ancient we would dry them and burn them in our firepit at night the lake probably has the best fine grained old growth timber on the bottom a diver a crane a barge Money to be made but probably some kind of naturalist law would prevent this River swimming came in later years cooler waters more alive More intimate more personal They were magical letting the current sweep you away for a moment or two before swimming back to the spot on the shore the trees hanging overhead like a secret tall glade beautiful