Imagining a singing bird
too far for inner sight or ear –
too bleak for calling, colly wing,
the starkest change from Adlestrop.
Willow herb least growing, live,
and buddleias wont survive,
to pull from air, their butterflies.
The patent wait, though more than that;
this patient needs the care or kill.
Fluorescent unknown name strip broke
by bottle thrown or stone from slab.
But who would want to recall tag?
The most lonely space I ever saw,
incomplete, for people-void,
white-light site with vacant stare,
without a shadow, perspective,
or gradation in the bright.
Abandoned cell, no prisoners,
insomnia, awake through force,
unstaffed pale face, station at night.
The pause was brief, the journey grief,
for these were laid tracks to and from
home, and all the trackside signals
sent, warned amber, do not proceed,
the red for how I’ll be received.
For disco lights, train station blues.
How distant Clapham Junction or
that omnibus, each, daily, full,
populace, porters turn deaf ear
to luggage plea, livery, soot
the pencil boy with spotter pad;
juggernaut brewing smoke signals,
bogies hidden, wind-up copied,
like Dublo model, hobby track.
This the platform, loneliness.
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including Poetry Potion. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com