Lynda Plater\u2019s pamphlet \u2018Three Seasons for Burning\u2019 contains many poems which give me a catch in my throat. This is one of them.<\/p>\n
He lost his life thinking of Eunice<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n She was a long low town To begin with there\u2019s something songlike in the way it opens, which is sustained right the way through the poem. The narrow, long form is one which I think of as speeding up the pace, but in this case seems to help the story move along more gently, revealing a little more of its intricacies piece by piece \u2018remembering\/ this long, slow time\u2019. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lynda Plater\u2019s pamphlet \u2018Three Seasons for Burning\u2019 contains many poems which give me a catch in my throat. This is one of them. He lost his life thinking of Eunice She was a long low town on the Louisiana plain as he drove down. The woman at his side was lovely (though he could not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5v6l4-dQ","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\non the Louisiana plain
\nas he drove down.
\nThe woman at his side
\nwas lovely (though
\nhe could not now
\neven think of her name)
\nand her dress
\nhad a shimmer
\nas the Chevrolet rolled
\nits peppermint green
\nbetween the fields,
\nsoothing heat down.
\nAnd she said something
\nsmall, shy from her place
\nat his side
\nas if she knew
\nhe would think of this,
\nthis slight, light moment
\nat his dying, remembering
\nthis long, slow time
\nwith heat moving off fields.
\nIt was a hot light:
\neven at the evening
\nwith sun red and hot
\n(hot<\/em>, he said,
\nas a red Cajun chilli)
\n<\/em>as a pain in the chest
\nburning him to ground.
\nYet even then
\nthere were some lights
\nstrung low in the line
\nto Eunice town
\nin whose deep arms
\npale stars came out
\nover the flat fields
\nwhere corn and cane
\nripened with the fall.
\nThen finally,
\neven stars went out.<\/p>\n
\nThe female personification of the town, and its name being a woman\u2019s name, gives the poem a suggestive ambiguity. While the conflation of \u2018the woman at his side\u2019 and the town is there, the reader always knows which is which. And there\u2019s a touching irony in the fact he remembers the name of the town but not the name of the woman at his side, made more poignant when \u2018she said something\/small, shy from her place\u2019. Which is followed by what I feel is a dimension-shifting revelation \u2018as if she knew\/ he would think of this,\/ this slight, light moment\/ at his dying\u2019. Premonition, hindsight, the mutability of memory all suddenly leap into the frame here and I\u2019m held in a present that, while containing this particular past, also changes it.
\nAnd it is a hard present, \u2018a pain in the chest\/ burning him to ground\u2019 while he relives this brief loaded memory. And the poem ends with that atmospheric conflation of the arms of the town, the memory and the woman whose name he can\u2019t recall but whose premonition is somehow at the core of it all. A poem full of the shifting ground between past and present before \u2018even stars went out\u2019.<\/p>\n