Trains

Trains

Near Corinth they sit,

sometimes for days,

on the siding beneath

the newly constructed railroad bridge

deciding

“Where to go?”

“What to do?”

In Cynthiana

Trains go roaring through:

Past stores, churches, homes,

3M and Bullard

Charging past

Lexington and Corbin,

through Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta

And finally to Pass Christian—

where they come up against the Gulf of Mexico

and

finally,

must

stop.

Thank you

Thanks so much for reading my poetry. I'd become discouraged; you lifted me up.

I've read enough poetry over the years, been enough of a reader to know that to become known as "poet" I needed to have at least some of my poems published. So I started sending my poetry out to literary journals, to magazines and even the New York Times. (The Times was a lark--what appeal could rural poetry have in our nation's largest city?) All I got back were rejection letters. One editor admitted to 'liking' "Trains"--but not enough to publish it. Otherwise, a great yawning silence. So on December 26, 2013 I started this blog, Country Traffic Jam.

In less than two weeks my poetry blog has had nearly 500 page views. Of course, that is not a huge number. But we are talking about a blog almost exclusively made up of poems--not a discussion of politics or the latest offense to sensibility carried out by some celebrity of the moment. Indeed,  I had thought that the blog would be something that basically Jeanine, members of my writing group, and I would read. Under those circumstances, nearly 500 readers in two weeks is an astonishing number. Thank you.

Poetry I write for me. But feedback is great--and that requires publication (of some sort). So I started the blog  as a way to 'publish' my poetry. And now I find that the poetry has some appeal. Wow!

Thank you, very very very much.

Bill McCann,
the Roxford Poet

Boiling water necessary for snow

God Knows

Boiling water

thrown into

sub-zero air

makes snow.

Now you know

what God knows.

Buick Winter

Buick Winter
Tires slowly tread
the trackless
gray snow
which leads ever on,
upon the road
that lies beneath.

Empty Calories

Empty Calories

The cat

            poised on a windowsill

intently watches a bird

            on the feeder perch,

                        not a foot away.

He pounces,

            and, after colliding with the window,

                        falls to the floor.

In moments,

            the bird is gone,

                        and the cat is back at his post—

patiently waiting

                                                for another snack to stop by.

Inspiration

My poems are mostly about rural life. Occasionally, other ideas intrude but not often. I moved to Corinth over Memorial Day weekend, 2012. I'd been for visits a few times prior to moving here, but that was about it. Instead, Jeanine had found Roxford after numerous trips around Harrison, Nicholas, Grant, Bourbon and Scott Counties. It was (and is) 12 acres, if not the middle of "Nowhere," a place where you can see "Nowhere." And it is absolutely gorgeous--as the poems so often demonstrate. Yet, what I like is that if you drive just 20 minutes (about 7 miles) you can be at I-75 and go almost anywhere with relative ease.

I've been a "city slicker" most of my life. Oh, I grew up on a farm--16 acres in rural Fayette Co.'s "South Elkhorn," not far from the Bluegrass Field airport. But most of my "farm work" was mowing the lawn and plucking weeds from the strawberry patch, or the flower garden--tasks I never learned to love. Occasionally, I might be prevailed upon to help a sister "muck" a horse stall or clean out a hoof "frog." But they were the riders, I was mostly a bystander. When I was a bit older,  I worked on my grandmother's farm in Clark Co. for a couple of years: throwing around hay bales, topping and cutting tobacco, and cleaning large fields of innumerable numbers of thistles. Still, I wasn't really much of a farmer--I only had the calluses that come from hard work at summer's end, never all year long. After college I moved away, living in Washington, DC before coming back to Kentucky to mostly live in ever-urbanizing Lexington.

But if I was never much of a "country boy" as a boy, young man, and middle-aged businessman-teacher-student-playwright, etc., I certainly have taken much inspiration from what I have seen around me in the distances from Roxford to Corinth in one direction and from Roxford to Cynthiana in the other. My hope is that the peace and tranquility that most of my poems inspire in me may have a similar affect on you.

Have a peaceful Sunday and a tranquil life.

This is Kentucky. . . .

This is Kentucky, after all
A sliver of moonlight
       through the trees
       illuminates the snow covered pond.
Tonight
       there are no clouds,
       no signs of snow.
But tomorrow snow in abundance
     and low temps
     are predicted.
So tomorrow night 
     the pond may be completely covered
     in drifts of snow
     and spots of ice.
Or not.
This is Kentucky, after all.