Hildegard (Dee) Lambert

CONTACT:
Address: P.O. Box 104, Cazenovia, WI 53924, phone: 608-983-2743
Email: bobdeelambert@gmail.com

BIO:
Hildegard (Dee) Lambert was born in Vienna, Austria. She immigrated to the US in 1955 and was raised in Janesville, Wisconsin. She is currently residing in Cazenovia, part of the Driftless.  She has been writing since she was a teenager, mainly poetry and journaling.  Two pieces, “The Breakdown” and “Train Ride” were included in the anthology, A Short Walk on a Long Road, from UW-Rock County Writing class, Spring 1977. Dee was writing a weekly column for Richland Observer and Reedsburg Times Press, in the 1980’s.  Later edited the “Happenings” a monthly newsletter for Gerber Products Co. in Reedsburg, Wisconsin from about 1994 to 2000.  She had put together a collection, Reflections on a Country Road of poems and short essays. Recently her poem “January Nights” was published in The Voice January 2022.  Dee is a member of the Shake Rag Alley poetry workshop, the Driftless Write-in group and the Fellowship of Wisconsin poets.

PUBLICATIONS:
Reflections on a Country Road.

Poetry

Winter is Coming

The soft whispers of autumn leaves
Falling, now gone.
In their stead, harsh winds that bite,
Whip around the corners.
And so it goes.
Winter is coming.

I saw a reflection in my window today.
The summer colors, the autumn light
gone, like the deep brown of my hair,
frosted white by time.
Lines creasing across this face.
Winter is coming.

A reflection from one window to another.
Behind me, a snow covered field,
Another winter, another time,
Bittersweet memories
children on sleds, snowmen guarding fields,
Winter is coming.

Below the second window
an old, old crate, shipping label intact,
Germany to USA back in ‘55.
All remind me of times long gone,
passed away, passed behind.
Two windows reflected,
one behind me, one looks to a hoar covered woods,
grayed by the icy mist.
A future as hazy as that reflection.

I am caught as well in that reflection,
dragging the past behind me,
too aware of what no longer is.
Always, always caught somewhere between,
the past, the present and the future.
In that presence, reflected too,
is the fire that warms me
where loneliness is my companion.
Winter is here.

Ode to Amtrak

Go West, they said,
It’ll be fun, they said.
Amtrak said.
The couple on YouTube said.

Why, you ask, why not fly?
Short answer is, I hate flying,
I hate airports, and paperwork,
And tight cabins, and rude staff.
So, I looked it up,
I did my research.
I booked a train ride, round trip no less.
(Very cheap, by the way, especially if you’re brave enough to go coach.
Great seats, no bed though, no private bathroom, no free meals in a fancy dining car—
The Orient Express it’s not.)

Want to see America, from the back roads, or tracks, the “real” America?
If you have lots of time, and no set schedule, and your friends are willing to wait for a train,
That’s two hours late.
Then, my friend, take the train,
Two stories high, older cars, much older tracks.

So began my 36 hour train ride.
On the Southwest Chief.
Chicago to Flagstaff, Arizona.
And a huge swatch of America.
Tracing this land like tracks on a zipper.
Plenty of room to sit and stash food.
And for scenery, there’s always the Observation Car.
Where anyone can sit, or eat, or read a book,
or chat with some new friends.

There was Alfonzo, who was working on the next Air Jordan’s and assured me he would be
famous one day,
Ralph, with the funny hat to cover his bad hair and would not believe that there could still be
snow on the mountains. Both heading all the way to L.A.
We discussed race relations in America.
I learned much from them, hopefully they heard me as well.
The sadly, stereotypical drunken man, announcing that “they always throw Natives off the train.”
The confrontation and chest-thumping, one man white and loud, one black and angry
Changing everything in that train car.
America at war with itself.
That all too familiar tension we live with today.

Railroad yards, junk yards, poverty surrounded by rusted cars and old tires, track homes and
old trailers. “Trailers for sale or rent, rooms to let, fifty cents”.
They whisk by with each telephone pole and construction site.
The long-forgotten train stations, not so forgotten by those who ride the rails.
More forgotten by those who’s homes or businesses once surrounded that station.
Would we want the rest of the world to see this, the wrong-side-of-the-tracks.

This side of America?

You will see it all from the window of a train;
the good, the bad, the ugly.
You will see America like never before,
the awesome, the mighty, the land that songs were written of.
Endless fields of grain, shimmering gold from the tracks to the horizon.
Green prairies with cattle and antelopes,
The old coral outside Dodge City, Kansas, still serving its original purpose.
“Amber waves of grain to purple mountain majesties.”

Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas.
Crossed the Mississippi and those mountains,
Just a promise in blue,
and yes, snow capped yet in June.

Slowly the fields became rockier, crags, shooting out of the dry earth into the sky.
God had planned to build a mountain here, then got tired and said, “The hell with it!”
threw the largest boulders helter-skelter down the trenches He had dug.
Cliff walls began to hug the train.
Maybe just a little too close?

Settled in for the night.
Slept through most of the heartland
Quite comfortable in the reclining seat.
In my mind, Paul Simon’s words…”They’ve all gone to look for America…”

Woke to rolling hills, mountains in the far distance.
Rivers and creeks rushing under the tracks, trestles, metal bridges
As we seemed to fly above the very ground itself.
The constant, changing landscape moving past us
Sometimes slowly, almost walking across those ancient tracks
Sometimes at the speeds these trains were built for, but are seldom able to achieve.

Passed La Posada in Winslow, almost dark.  The beautiful, old station and Hotel lit up in
welcome.  Arizona, finally!

I had to return the same way I had gone West.
Departed this time from Lamy, New Mexico.
This was the very first station for the old Santa Fe railroad.
Dusty little town, old adobe style station.
Boy Scouts were my traveling companions this trip and of course, Amish families.

Dark, ominous clouds began to follow us in the distance once we left Raton, New Mexico.
Drifting tails pulled out from the clouds, filled the sky from one horizon to the other.
With a sinking feeling I realized that we would be traveling right through the storm.
It hit with lightning, thunder, wind, rain and even hail.
Didn’t really last that long, before the sky began to clear, and the sun pierced through.

However, as is common in the West,
ditches were filling along the tracks with raging water,
A frenzy of sudden force and abandon.
Water forced its way through the cracks in the cliff sides, pouring down from all sides.

The train stopped.
On a trestle.
Nothing below us except,
Water surging, churning and angry.

Two hours we waited, tense and silent, while the track inspection was going on somewhere
ahead of us. 
Finally the word came down. 
A washout on the track ahead.
Crews were being sent out.
We would have to return to Raton, backwards,
Slowly, crawling, the last car now the first.

Mother Nature was letting us know who is still in charge
As she’s apt to do occasionally.
Doesn’t seem to matter how you travel, boats, trains, buses or planes,
She still has the upper hand.

It was already getting dark. 
Spent the night, slept on the train, in Raton.
Two boys behind me trying in vain to suppress their laughter, as only young boys can laugh.
The Amish mother in front of me, singing ever so softly a lullaby to her little one.
Not a bad way for sleep to find you.

Fifteen hours later we resumed our journey.
It surely helped that Boy Scouts and Amish folk are fairly calm
And made the best of the delay.

We may have been late, but they kept us safe,
Still able to enjoy the New Mexico and Colorado landscapes,
The constant mountains in the distance.
All the land between.

In a world distancing itself so often from one another,
A world filled with lonely people,
There is always a train, where you are forced, with each shuffle and bounce,
To meet humanity again, to recognize each other, to share this moving space.

As the train passed the Missouri once again,
Fishing boats on both sides of the river, their nets dragging in the water,
The setting sun burning red behind them.

A view brought to you only from a train.