Train Trip Triptych

 I have been writing prolifically of late, both for imminent publication, and much more aimlessly. It is often hard to know what to do with the vast amount of writing I've produced, so from time to time I have decided to share a little more of it here. Much of my recent scribbling has been done in the course of railway journeys, and I reproduce the following short poetry sequence as a tiny taste of the times. Dreamed up on returning from a trip to the coast, it is an example of the sort of material I have been writing almost therapeutically, in between more laboured efforts at structured work.

 

TRAIN TRIP TRIPTYCH

 

The Estuary,

Humber’s tongue,

licks land,

expands

into a sea-like bulge

of bluey grey

 

 

The Humber at night

is a vast flat mat of blue-black glass,

sleek sheet of slate, ice-slice,

brightened by stripes of lemon light

as headlights drip electric onto water

 

On the late train,

riding by the towns

and fields of childhood,

as station names reel by,

lit windows peer from houses

through the window of the train,

rain zig-zagging on the pane