First Journey (by Roger Craik)

First Journey
by Roger Craik

As inch by inch the train pulled out

with me inside alone,

I saw my mother in her fifties skirt

and black-rimmed glasses and dark coat

watching still,

and then, as if to race the train,

my father running after me

not as an athlete would

or fathers of my friends at school,

but stroking, pressing down the air

with the heels of his hands and then with his palms

like some great cat with padded paws.

 

And all that afternoon through hours of fields

and towns whose names lodge with me still,

I saw him in my mind’s eye running thus

beyond the platform’s end and then beside the rails

on stony ground, on straggling grass,

outdistanced, and outdistanced further still.

* * * * *

(c) 2009 by Roger Craik, all rights reserved, used with his permission

We gratefully acknowledge Finishing Line Press,
publishers of Roger Craik’s Of England Still, where this poem appears.

Roger Craik, Associate Professor of English at Kent State University Ashtabula, has written four full-length poetry books – I Simply Stared (2002), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), The Darkening Green (2004), and, most recently, Those Years (2007), nominated for a Pushcart Prize and translated into Bulgarian in 2009. His poetry has appeared in several national poetry journals, such as The Formalist, Fulcrum, The Literary Review and, most recently, The Atlanta Review.  His latest book, Of England Still, is now available from Finishing Line Press.

 

English by birth and educated at the universities of Reading and Southampton, Craik has worked as a journalist, TV critic and chess columnist. Before coming to the USA in 1991, he worked in Turkish universities and was awarded a Beineke Fellowship to Yale in 1990. He is widely traveled, having visited North Yemen, Egypt, South Africa, Tibet, Nepal, Japan, and, most recently, Bulgaria, where he taught during spring 2007 on a Fulbright Scholarship.

 

Poetry is his passion: he writes for at least an hour, over coffee, each morning before breakfast, and he enjoys watching the birds during all the seasons.

   

Fish in Geneva State Park, Ohio (by Roger Craik) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwTQbLsEx90


Fish in Geneva State Park, Ohio © 2009 by Roger Craik, all rights reserved

Read by the author on 18 November 2008 during Lix and Kix 2
at the 806 Wine and Martini Bar in Cleveland, Ohio

Photography and editing by John “Jesus Crisis” Burroughs

* * * * *

Roger Craik is English by birth, was educated at the Universities of Reading and Southampton, and
came to the United States in 1991.  Roger taught in Bulgaria on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2007
 and currently serves as an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University, Ashtabula, in Ohio.

We recommend the following Roger Craik poetry collections:

Those Years (2007) [available from vanZeno Press]

Darkening Green (2004), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), I Simply Stared (2002)

Pencil Sharpener (by Roger Craik) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaFVT6S7Nf0


Pencil Sharpener © 2009 by Roger Craik, all rights reserved

Read by the author on 18 November 2008 during Lix and Kix 2
at the 806 Wine and Martini Bar in Cleveland, Ohio

Photography and editing by John “Jesus Crisis” Burroughs

* * * * *

Roger Craik is English by birth, was educated at the Universities of Reading and Southampton, and
came to the United States in 1991.  Roger taught in Bulgaria on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2007
 and currently serves as an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University, Ashtabula, in Ohio.

We recommend the following Roger Craik poetry collections:

Those Years (2007) [available from vanZeno Press]

Darkening Green (2004), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), I Simply Stared (2002)

Indispensable (by Roger Craik) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC4at-Dqcak


Indispensable © 2009 by Roger Craik, all rights reserved

Read by the author on 18 November 2008 during Lix and Kix 2
at the 806 Wine and Martini Bar in Cleveland, Ohio

Photography and editing by John “Jesus Crisis” Burroughs

* * * * *

Roger Craik is English by birth, was educated at the Universities of Reading and Southampton, and
came to the United States in 1991.  Roger taught in Bulgaria on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2007
 and currently serves as an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University, Ashtabula, in Ohio.

We recommend the following Roger Craik poetry collections:

Those Years (2007) [available from vanZeno Press]

Darkening Green (2004), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), I Simply Stared (2002)

Poem for Him (by Roger Craik)

Roger Craik reads his poetry during Lix & Kix at the 806 in Cleveland on 18 November 2008
[photo by Jesus Crisis]


Poem for Him

Although he doesn’t know it, these days are the last
of his marriage.  Perhaps he’s reading now
on his side of the bed, beneath his lamp, while you
peruse the book of myths my father bought
second-hand, in England, twenty years ago.
The date is written in the front, in fountain pen.

I’ve hated him, or rather, I should say,
the thought of him for close on fifteen months.
But on this evening with late summer rain
drumming warm against the windows of my house
that gives upon the lake, I ask myself
if it’s indulgence, now you say your future’s mine

that now it’s him, him whose pain at once seems real,
I think of as he turns to sleep
toward you still, your face turned to the wall,
and hopes tomorrow you’ll be once again
as once you were
to him.

And suddenly, as thought folds darkly into thought,
I realize how much, this moment, now,
over a bottle, or maybe two,
of red wine in some café that he’d choose,
I’d like to talk with him, just him,
about Stravinsky, Brendan Behan, the price of birdseed by the pound —

anything.


* * * * *


(c) 2007 by Roger Craik, all rights reserved
Taken from Those Years – a volume in the vanZeno Press Professional Reading Series
Used by permission of the poet

Biographical note adapted from the back cover of Those Years:

Roger Craik, Associate Professor of English at Kent State University, Ashtabula, has written three full-length poetry books – I Simply Stared (2002), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), and The Darkening Green (2004) – and his work has appeared in several national poetry journals, including The Formalist, The Literary Review, and Fulcrum.

English by birth and educated at the universities of Reading and Southampton, Craik has worked as a journalist, TV critic and chess columnist.  Before coming to the USA in 1991, he worked in Turkish universities and was awarded a Beineke Fellowship to Yale in 1990.  He is widely traveled, having visited North Yemen, Egypt, Tibet, Nepal, Japan, Poland, and Bulgaria (where he taught during the spring of 2007 on a Fulbright Scholarship).

For more by Dr. Roger Craik, please explore these volumes: