Kiwis and Fairy Bread

17-19 June 2025

On Wednesday the 18th of June Mike and I looked out the window of our Amtrak sleeper cabin and watched the landscape of our country change dramatically. It was a quiet, humbling and spiritual experience. We were in awe.

As Mike took photographs, I wrote phrases in my journal, a fifty two page epic poem. It seems appropriate that I recount the experience not in my usual prose style, but in the lyrical way in which I felt it. Here are some excerpts.

A Gray sky

Our reflection in the rain washed window.

Red houses in

Flat green fields

Rows and rows of plants I surely will eat

In one form or another

I sit with my knitting and chat.

A splash of orange on the horizon

The sun sets.

I do not sleep in the dark, rumbling night.

The train slows through a town of boxy brick buildings and homes.

A few street lights reveal straight lines

The streets make a grid.

It looks unhappy.

Three people board the train.

The sky lightens.

A bright strip of orange

The sun rises.

Early morning in Denver.

It smells like coffee and ice cold water.

A station of overstuffed leather sofas

And dried flower arrangements

The city tries hard

to show it’s cowboy roots

in all its newness.

The sky brightens.

Tanika joyfully announces “The Curve!”

The Big Ten Curve.

The Observation is crowded as we watch

Our engine

Pull ten cars up and up

Curving to the right then left

Then right again.

The grasses are bright green

Up to a cliff of carved yellow rock

Pine trees cling to the rocks on cliffs of red rubble

Dry hills

Pointy cacti

Scrubby bushes

The low rumble and the silence of the train

Riding fast through this

Marvel

The Colorado Rockies

This train is a marvel too

The swet

The muscle

The pain and the

Genius

The death

That dared to create this route

So that I could sit so comfortably

And write

As my husband takes photographs

Click click

Click.

We gaze

We smile

We gasp

Low grassland now

Cabins

A gigantic dam

Under construction

White peaks

I think of the people who

First lived here

The Indigenous people

Who loved this land

Climbed the sharp rocks

Fished the rushing waters of white foam

This is a sacred place

It makes me

Quiet

It makes me

Cry

Suddenly a paved road

Breaks the spell

The train sings it’s song

Hoooorn

Horn hooooorn

As we go through a fading town

A crumbling stage coach stop and mercantile.

People still live here

A snow capped mountain

In the distance

Purple flowers

A swamp

The white bark of aspen trees

contrasting with the bright green of new leaves

The snowy mountain is closer

Complete darkness

The Moffit Tunnel

Six miles when we cannot leave our compartment

To save fresh air

we are told

I try to fall asleep

But cannot

Sunlight

The snow is behind us

We have gone under the tallest peak

Under hundreds of feet of rock and snow

The Continental Divide

From here

All waters run to the Pacific Ocean.

We are in The West now

Can you imagine crossing these mountains

On foot?

High cliffs of brown stone

Rocks dangling

Impossible heights and shapes,

I see faces

And bodies

Of Gods

Small caves form eyes that stare at me

I wonder at the stories

That have been told here

About brave men and women

Tricksters and spirits.

I want to go back five hundred years

Sit by the fire

Hear the stories

Retell them

I wonder if people evolved

To look like this land

The train slows

Respecting this sacred place

A cloud above the cliff appears like an erupting volcano

It is just trick of the mountain and the rails

The forest suddenly looks like The Appalachians

and then changes again to rocks

Of white, coral and sage

Splotches of paint

A hillside appears as a pile of

Giant oyster shells

And pearls

Tall thin spines of deep evergreens

Cling to bright red soil

Where a mountain once collapsed

In a landslide

And the town of Glenwood Springs rebuilt

Near The Donner Pass.

And capitalizes on the history

The tragedy

The bravery

The desperation

The sadness

Yet the city thrives

I think of the time it took

The toll it took

On emotions and health and strength

To travel here on foot

When there were no train tracks

or roads.

Or grocery stores, hotels

Restaurants or phones.

For a better life, I suppose

I hope it was so

More impossible rock formations rise

Above us

A forest fire

Ten years back at least

Barren trees stand for miles

The green is coming back.

The forest renews itself.

The Colorado River

Winds and splashes

People in rafts wave to us

Beside the river are painted hills

Layers and layers of color

Reds and browns

Worn down

And tipped and shaped

Into arches and angles

In earthquakes

Millennia ago

This was once grander than

The Grand Canyon

The river an unimaginable width.

A memory

Of my mother

Running her fingers together on the table

Showing a very small me

how these beautiful canyons

are formed

The snowy peaks now gone

We are in a desert

The mountains and peaks

Spaced evenly apart

Like they were plowed by gods

An Egyptian temple rises on a plateau

Like The Valley of the Kings

Only this these temples

Were not carved by man

But by time

Nature formed the bricks

Chose the colors

Sculpted the columns

They go on for miles

A crater

A pyramid of red stone

Rain carved colums

Standing like guards with heads bowed

Below sphinxes

Now and then a farm

A truck or a car.

Do they know

the heavenly beauty they pass?

Were they ever in awe

As I am now?

The train rushes westward

The formations continue to change

Now the stone forms

A village of thatched huts

Now

Honeycomb candy

Now

Hundreds of

Sleeping elephants

Now

Ant hills for giants

A total absence of green

Settlements of trailer parks

Seem out of place

Telephone poles

A row of crucifixes for a hundred miles

The setting sun gives them a holy aura

What we do not see

Are animals

Only a lone bird

Souring occasionally

In the blue sky

An alpaca in a farm in the middle of nothing

The sun sets over scrubby hills

My husband is beautiful

In the twilight

I have watched this landscape from

Sunrise to sunset

And sunrise to sunset

Again

My neck hurts from stretching

To see it all

My mind exhausted

As it tries

to remember it all

My fingers cramped from writing

This poem

Trying to do justice

To what is indescribably

Beautiful.