WEBVTT

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Oh, another poem, in a way
another poem about a child

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is called Cross Ties.

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You know, sometimes when
you start writing a poem,

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a little bit of it
will come to you.

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Sometimes the beginning,
but not always.

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And that was the
way this one went.

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But the first couple of
lines came to mind easily.

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It looked like it wanted
to go on someplace.

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And I knew what these
first two lines were about.

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They were a memory from a
childhood in New Jersey of when

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I used to walk to town.

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And the shortest
way to walk to town

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was over an abandoned,
eerie railroad track.

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Nothing had passed along this
track for maybe 20 years.

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And yet every time
I walked that track

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I kept thinking of what my
mother and father had told me,

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don't walk on railroad tracks.

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A train might come along.

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And I knew no train was going to
come along, but just the same,

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I couldn't help sometimes
looking over my shoulder

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throwing a fearful
glance back to see

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whether by chance a
train might be running.

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And these lines went: out
walking ties left over

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from a track where nothing
travels now but rust and grass.

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Having got those
lines down on paper,

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I said, well, where
do we go from here?

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But this looked like the first
leg of a metaphor, you know.

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It looked like something to
compare to something else.

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But what?

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I thought and thought.

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I thought, well, what
is this experience

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of looking for a train
that isn't there like?

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Then the devil
arose and tempted me

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to write a significant
and important poem.

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It said, ah, ha ha, aha,
Kennedy, this is obviously

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like living in this
atomic age, not

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knowing when a
Holocaust might come.

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So I tried to push
the poem ahead.

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But every time I try to push a
poem ahead under my own steam,

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it doesn't end up a poem
but ends up a zombie.

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So I couldn't get
any place with that.

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So I retired the poem
to my dresser drawer

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and forgot about
it for two years.

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In the meantime, a
big event happened.

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My wife and I had our
first child, a little girl.

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And promptly, we fell into a
controversy between ourselves.

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By that time, I
was a fallen away

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Catholic and my wife, a
fallen away Protestant.

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And we thought, should
we get the baby baptized?

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My Catholic training suggested
that, yes, we'd better

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get this baby baptized.

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Or what if the baby
dies just because we

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withheld this simple sacrament?

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Then the baby will
go to limbo, that

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place where the unhappy,
baptized infants go.

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Dante gives us a tour
through it, a quick tour.

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And so, we don't
know what to do.

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It seemed to me that to
get Kathleen baptized

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would be hypocritical.

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So we were at loggerheads
until we were visiting

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my wife's family in Milwaukee.

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They are a bunch of Germans who
love their beer and bratwurst.

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They love to throw
parties on any occasion.

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Somebody said, well, why don't
we get Kathleen baptized?

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We'll call the minister over
and we'll make an event,

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call all the local relatives.

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And both my wife
and me, together, we

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said, Oh, yes, yes,
yes, let's do it.

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What an idea.

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So the minister was called,
Kathleen was baptized,

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and we felt greatly relieved.

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Not long after that, in one
of those dry periods where

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you just tool over your old
unfinished fragments that

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haven't gone any place,
hoping one of them

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will come alive again, I came
across the first two lines

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once more about the
train I was looking

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for that I knew wasn't
there, but which somehow I

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feared anyway.

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And so the poem went on.

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This is Cross Ties.

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Out walking ties left over from
a track where nothing travels

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now but rust and grass,
I could take stock

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in something that would
pass, bearing down

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hell bent from behind my back.

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A thing to sidestep
or go down before.

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Far off, indifferent
as that, curfews

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wail that the evening wind
flings like a sack of mail.

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Or close up as the
moon whose head

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beam stirs a flock of
cloud to make tracks.

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Down to strafe bristlebacked
grass, a hawk falls.

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There's a screech like
steel wrenched taut

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till severed, out of reach
or else beneath desiring.

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I go safe, walk on,
tensed for a leap,

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unreconciled to a dark
void, all kindness.

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When I smell the salt,
I throw the devil some

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and still I let them
sprinkle water on my child.

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