A Journal Of Blue Lines: Utrecht Poem by Steve Taunton

The artist’s landscapes outstretched
My southern train crossed canals
Crossed burning beams of a setting Noord Zee sun.
Flat polder lands joined royal ink
Thick darkness above, bordered
Only by clusters of distant lights,
Mingling with stars
Touching my world at the horizon.

Juxtaposed, the lines of rail and the edge of city,
My train of burdens paused.
With bestial patience, sighing, humming,
Its arrivals released
To aunts, old friends, and lovers,
The train removed itself,
Drawing out along the Rijn,
And, from the shadows of another platform,
A lonely guitar cried.

Into the city,
Over the hard-paved designs
Of Utrecht’s canal bridges and planes,
With the last traffic of bikes, I entered
The night of Nachtegaal Straat.
Number 26 - waiting on the stoop,
Among the voices of the pavements,
The woman sat sipping the blues of the night.

A bright sky, rising
I heard beyond the walls of my narrow-wedged room
A song of Bessie Smith, seasoned well
For some yet unsought dreamt thoughts.
I searched beyond the walls of the tall-glazed room
Down onto the pursuits of meaning
In Nachtegaal Straat. As bright lines, rising,
The hours of Utrecht lay before me.

Sky-lit Utrecht – light-filled spaces,
Life filled with Spring
In the bulb-blooming gardens in a bomb-blown nave
Of the ancient Dom Kerk – filled with sky
Over the quartet that played on Wim’s green lawns.
Above Nelleke’s, from an open radio,
A richly toned, coffee voice deepened the translucent
Silk of setting sun, “[killed] softly with His song.”
I entered the evening of Nachtegaal Straat
With sounds of a sax rising in violet lines.

(April,1974)