blood lines

blood lines
dedicated to my maternal grandfather ‘Pop’ Rumble,
my uncle and nephew
december 2014

‘The Raurimu Spiral is a single-track railway spiral, starting with a horseshoe curve, overcoming a 139-metre (456 ft) height difference, in the central North Island of New Zealand, on the North Island Main Trunk railway between Wellington and Auckland. A notable feat of civil engineering, having been called an “engineering masterpiece”… and is designated a significant engineering heritage site’. From Wikipedia

3 generations
worked on the rails
the grandfather drove
steam locomotives
down those tracks
that were heavy
labour through
bush, round spur
and spiral
the son,
the grandson too
stayed on the
straight and narrow
followed suit
driving the
engines through
bush, round spur
and spiral
remembering the
grandfather in
night’s chill down
those silver lines
a ghost broad
as a moonlit
cloud coming
up off the ridge
the big gruff
star there
trilling slow
to the call
of the morepork
those rails
in the blood
the straight
and narrow

The music for the reading is from a performance by Jeremy Wilson on trombone & Caleb Harris on piano of “Piece in E-flat minor” by Breton composer & poet Guy Ropartz (1864 – 1955).