Email From America ... One

 

I am coming towards the end of a three week visit to the United States, my first trip to the country at what is surely by any metric a most significant juncture in its history. These travels take me from New York to Washington DC and back, encompassing a range of other cities in between, and have prompted a large amount of writing and photography, providing me with material for a multitude of projects, far exceeding the one or two ideas I had on setting out.  These include a celebration of my Stateside nature sightings, my thoughts on American railway ("railroad"?) travel, a development of my Night Stations book idea, and a diary of the final week of the Presidential Election and how it seemed to me.  

I envisage incorporating these writings into a future book of travel essays, and would like to share a few brief excerpts from them here. With a nod to the late, great British-American broadcaster Alistair Cooke and his legendary radio programme Letter From America (a short selection of whose transcripts being one of the books I have been reading on my travels), but reflecting the modern means by which I have mostly been conveying my thoughts to friends, I thought I would name this feature Email From America. 

The first instalment of these excerpts is a poem (an Octolune, in fact), written after a visit to the Empire State Building. The previous day I had been to the 9/11 Memorial Museum, which undoubtedly influenced the writing, as did the thoughts of losses in my own life, and the regret of being unable to share the experiences of this and other journeys with loved ones no longer here.

Moon of memory,

reminding us

of all that we have lost;

a bloody ruby

smouldering over towers and rivers,

your defiant shine’s

a sign,

a tear in time.