That’s how I got to see the Mississippi River. Rounds and rounds of beers and civic pride and cultural comparisons and wanting to try prairie oysters but the jars bloody-well empty, when somebody suggests, insists, and you’re laughing in the back seat of a car, and when you stop it becomes all serious and quiet, and you’re led in the dark to the top of a dirt mound levee; and it’s pitch black but you sense something vast, lurking and fucking awesome out there and down at your feet. We all sobered and nobody said anything for fear of breaking the spell. We knew the river was there, the river knew we had come to see her. Then when we felt we had gained a sense of up, down and across, a bright, white light popped the black like a distant search probe and it kept sweeping from bank to bank in furtive, jerking arcs. “Barges”, was all our hosts explained, all they needed to explain.
My Illinois experience leads me to post a poem by a renowned American poet Alan Kaufman, titled, Across the Mississippi. I love this poem - not only for the content that I feel I can relate to, but also for the conversational and confessional style in which the poem is written. Alan Kaufman follows on the heels of the beat generation of poets – grown up impoverished tough, seeking the altruistic heart of America, somehow lost in the ugliness of city and struggle, racial abuse, greed, indifference, pimps and drugs. I love it!
Across the Mississippi
(Alan Kaufman: 1950? - )
We crossed the
Mississippi’s muddy brown expanse in a blinding
thunderstorm,
creeping over a big
suspension bridge whose name nobody knew,
in a bus with sheets of
rain battering windows feeble as eyelids
trembling in fear,
and we could hardly see
but for glimpses of suspension cable over
the sullen river, on
the banks houses like garbage cans with pedal lids,
and over it all a sky
the colour and consistency of clay,
with an occasional
lightening bolt seaming it like a cheek
wrinkled in angry
laughter.
And we didn’t even know
that we were crossing
the Mississippi until
that bottle of Fleishman’s whiskey
fell from the overhead
luggage rack
and the lanky driver
with hair in his eyes, and rolled sleeves,
and a pack of
filterless Pall Malls
cast a glaring boozy
eye our way in the rear view mirror,
pulled over the bus
right there on the bridge
and announced for the
twentieth time since leaving New York City
that Federal
regulations prohibit booze consumption aboard,
which hadn’t made a
goddamned difference to anyone
for over a thousand
miles so far,
and didn’t make a
gaddamned difference now.
The drunkards still
snuck drinks and the sober people didn’t.
And he put the bus into
high gear and gunned it.
And this was as we
crossed the Mississippi,
though we didn’t even
know it.
Assumed it was just
some trash river,
as some birds are trash
birds – say, the robin.
A trash river, some of
us thinking, a love canal,
an above-ground
industrial sewer of radioactive Republican by-products
by which to contaminate
and kill the poor on the merry road to profit.
So we didn’t even know
that we were crossing that famous river,
had no way to know.
Most of us had never
seen it.
I had come from a
transient hotel room east of the Hudson to find
my gain in
California. I didn’t have much money.
When the bus pulled
into a rest stop, I stayed on board – didn’t
stumble off like the
others blear-eyed drunk on lack of sleep
to gorge myself on fast
food.
I was making it across
the continent on three loaves of wonder bread
and two jars of peanut
butter and one of jam, and so far so good.
And that bottle of
Fleishman’s that dropped out missed
a passenger’s big pink
ear by a hair’s breadth, bounced
without shattering, and
rolled to a stop against the bolted leg of a chair,
and the passenger, his
name as I recall was Chopper,
reached down, retrieved
the bottle, held it up with a big grin
and while everybody in
the back of the bus roared with approval,
he waved it at the
driver, who stopped the bus and made the speech.
And then, after a
moment’s sullen pause,
suddenly the driver’s
voice came on again, but kinder,
and he said with a
gentle pride that surprised most of us I think:
“You are crossing the
Mississippi River, on the Sasquahana
Bridge, and are about
to enter the town of Shilo Springs.”
And the effect on us of
this announcement was like what maybe the
Hebrews felt when Moses
told them after all their wanderings
And afflictions: You are
crossing the Jordan River. You are
entering the
Promised Land.
Because everyone became
very serene suddenly,
and reposed quiet in
their seats,
some with heads cocked,
and just slow-watching the passage
occur.
The ex-con wearing the
shower cap, the hungry computer jock,
the professional
piercer with earrings in his eyes and ears and exposed
nipples in a fishnet
shirt,
the old woman with a
garbage bag containing all her
possessions riding on
her lap,
the Nam vet with a
baseball cap grey beard blue eyes
the colour of
anti-freeze,
that girl who looked
like every girl I’d ever seen writhe nude
in the glaring
footlights of a topless bar,
the silent man who
refused our repeated offers
of whiskey with a
tight, unresentful smile,
and even the loud,
hard-muscled mustached guy
with a face like a
skinned and butchered leg of steer
(but whom many of us
figured for a killer of some kind,
in flight from his
latest barroom manslaughter),
everybody, and that
includes that stiff and uncommunicative
respectably-dressed
middle-aged lady
with silver hair who
shuddered when asked by the ex-con
for a match, everybody
without exception
seemed to give up their
tension and their fear
like the dying
surrender of a soul on its way to final rest
and we sat back and
just let the transition occur.
And on the other side
of the Mississippi River it was like an older,
more innocent time in
America.
There was a kind of
canal branching from the main body of water,
and less turbulence to
the rain
and we could see
clearly through the windows
as an old time boat
paddled its way to the interior
past banks lined with
weeping willows,
and the houses were
bigger than they’d seemed from the bridge,
they were stately grey
with age
and big columns
announced their facades
and dark mandala-shaped
stained glass attic windows,
the kind you see in
pictures in magazines,
suggested, at least to
my mind, the sanctuary and safety
of a family cemetery
vault, of time and place and the dignity
of knowing where you
come from and where you’ll probably end up too.
And this calmed me,
calmed everyone I think,
and then the bus met, to
our delight, a roadblock
and we had to detour
through little old time streets
and it was peaceful for
a few brief minutes,
and then the bus drew
up to the edge of a puddle
as wide and deep as a
stream
and the brakes hissed
and the driver’s voice announced:
“We are going to ford
this puddle,” and we cheered.
And just then a man
dressed in a green flannel shirt and denim
coveralls stepped from
the door of one of the houses
and stood there stock
still on the porch to watch.
The rain had lessened
and as the bus descended,
Almost kissing the rim
of the tires,
we watched the man’s
face watching us
with a kind of
compassionate interest, as if encouraging our
success, and when the
bus climbed out on the other side
dripping like a
baptized bather
the driver braked again.
“We’ll sit here a
minute,” he said “to let the brakes dry.”
And that man on the
porch,
I guess he saw our
faces dim in the tinted rain swept-windows,
and lifted his hand in
a wave.
A few of us waved back,
and he beamed a
smile. Then he turned and entered the
house.
We heard the porch door
slam,
crisp and clean in the
pattering rainfall.
The mighty Mississippi River
does have an effect. I feel Kaufman
believes something about the Mississippi defines the pure spirit of America – all
the passengers on the bus – simple dudes, a cross section of American society, folk
who flaunt rules, act irreverent and don’t understand where they belong, that
is, up until they get to the river. The
driver who acts tough authoritarian, but changes when he gets to the river. All were changed by crossing the Mississippi;
it pulled them together, straightened them up, reminded them of pride, pride
for their beautiful land, national pride.
And across the other side, a caretaker of the land, “dressed in green flannel shirt”, with, “the dignity of knowing where you come from and where you’ll
probably end up too – the sanctuary
and safety of a family cemetery vault, of time and place…..” lifts his hand
in a neighbourly wave, God speed and good luck.
2010.
The mundane life of the commuter, industrial city - 6am alarm, out of
bed, 7am; reverse the car out of the carport, 1512AM on the radio, Tony Eastly,
Fran Kelly, breakfast talk-back; nothing going through my mind until the
traffic stops somewhere along the same old route and then I’m staring into my
field of vision and not thinking.
The Crossing.
I come over the rail crossing at the back of Tighes
Hill TAFE,
it’s the way I go now, used to go up through
Charlestown
and down Brunker Road,
through all the stop lights and cross streets,
now I take the by-pass, I think it’s quicker,
though I’m still late most mornings to work.
The crossing’s a gamble, coal trains, freight trains
travelling the line, spurred off north and south.
The trains come reptile long and patiently slow,
so it’s tempting if you can’t see the loco engine
or the last car, to turn out of the stalled traffic
and drive back to Beaumont Street,
always a relief when the end carriage clears the
crossing,
and the boom goes up.
So we all sit there idle in
our vehicles,
separated from each other by
steel, stock and bonnets.
Just a way down from the
crossing
there’s a small cottage with
an enclosed sleep-out
glazed in plain glass, painted
white and flat on the ground,
they call them ‘miner’s’ cottages,
this one’s got no curtains
so you can see in clear
through the glass,
a clothesline hangs temporary
in two loops
strung from one end of the
sleep-out to the other,
a convenient drying area on
wet days,
except it’s right there on the
busy road
and people get to study things
in detail
when held up in traffic
waiting for a train to pass.
The clothesline always holds a
solitary pair of underpants
always pegged in the same
spot.
I’ve seen underpants like this
before, but never wore them.
I think they are favored more
by the thicker,
heavy bodied person, they are
classic underpants,
by which I mean, back in
fashion history the design
must have started as
‘long-johns’, heavy wool blend
that sags and bags but now,
the legs have shortened
until they are stumpy lengths so
they stretch
firm around the upper thigh,
stop anything getting out,
also a wide elastic waist band
to truss in a bulging gut,
it’s a workingman’s garment, the
pattern says industrial clothing
cut from bolts of cloth in a
Commonwealth factory, King Gee, Hard Yakka,
no erotic intrigue with this
type of thing so they hang
without embarrassment on the
street, at the railway crossing,
and the trains click by and
people sit in their cars and pay no attention.
The underpants,
they are always hanging in the
same spot
and there’s never ever any
additional washing,
just those one pair of
dirty-grey shit catchers
colored from repeated cycles
of wear.
And I can’t help think
underpants don’t exist alone
there’s got to be an owner
someplace,
though that reminds me of
times back in my Navy days,
we’d be cleaning up the
mess-deck for inspection
and somebody would retrieve a
cruddy pair of Y-fronts
from way back under a seat and
hold them up
in a disgusted, revolting
pincer grip and ask,
“does anybody own theeese!”
Them underpants never had any
owner lay claim.
Another thing with owners, they
usually come back
and un-peg their washing when
dry,
these pants are dry, never
seen them wet,
dry, crisp, cardboard stiff, as
dry as a parching drought,
where’s the person doodling
around thinking,
“I wonder if that washing’s
dry yet?”
Maybe the person’s up and
gone, shared a rental once
and moved on without taking
all of his stuff,
what’s the use forwarding
them, don’t like to interfere really,
always hanging out his laundry
in full view, he did;
not that he had a lot mind you
……….
or dead, that’s all that’s
left of him, shame really,
I expect his family will want
to collect them,
that’s if he had any family,
mean while just leave em there,
ain’t nobody goes out to the
sleep-out much anyway ……..
I watch the boxcars pass left
to right in an endless line.
The crossing signal lights
blink a hypnotic red rhythm.
I close and open each of my
eyes in a mimic of the lights,
but it starts to make me feel
sick, that, and looking,
and wondering about the
underpants.
J. O. White
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