This poem originated on a slow train journey from London to Durham for my father’s funeral, and an even slower train back the same night. I’d scribbled down a few lines, fallen asleep, and woke up with my head resting on a lovely young woman’s shoulder. I mumbled an apology, but she said “It’s all right, pet, I’m very comfortable”, and we both went back to sleep. Brief encounters … part of the oddity of travelling, where being encapsulated shifts you out of time as well as place.
Grey scurf-patched grass. Coal-coloured streams
seep through the tyres and tins and glinting glass.
Crippled walls of soot-red brick, bleak troubled dreams,
blind memories, old lantern-slides that pass
beyond perception, never quite revealing station names
that blur away on neatly-painted wooden boards.
Inside the rattling rhythm, dirty windows frame
and isolate the travellers. Communication cords
must not be used. We move on parallel lines
towards divergent destinations, never meet
in this encapsulated absolute where signs
like “Gentlemen please lift the seat”
discreetly segregate us. Simple trust
in progress tells us that the journey’s end
is where we want to go. We brush the dust
of leaving from our feet, anticipate some friend
to meet us. But then the flickering picture stops.
An unseen signal? Windows mirror fears.
Stillness. Dark, dingy fields. Silent raindrops
etch into certainty with tears.
