The Flying Scotsman

 

And here's another one about trains... also one of a short series of poems about my Dad.

The Flying Scotsman

Some Saturdays Dad would take me to the footbridge

over the railway lines where we would wait.

Staring into distance at twenty-two minutes past nine

we’d see the smoke from far away

 

here it comes   here it comes   here it comes...

 

clouds of vapour growing bigger and bigger, closer and closer.

The train slowed just a bit as it rolled through the little station

away down the track; then, speeding up with steam hissing,

whistle screaming it would thunder towards us

 

here it comes      here it comes      here it comes ...

 

Too small to see over the railing, I’d jump up and down

and we’d both wave madly at the massive engine.

If we were lucky, the driver would wave back at Dad and me,

both smiling through clouds of choking smoke.

 

The train rumbled right under our feet,

filled our ears with its roar; the throbbing vibration

felt through all our bodies. We would wait on the bridge,

smarting eyes staring, as the misty trail disappeared into the north.

Making tracks

This poem appears in an anthology just published by South West Wales Connected and Severnside Community Rail Partnership. Writers from all over the south Wales region, and south west England, were invited to take part in a project to write poetry inspired by train travel.

We were writing early in 2024 at the time the latest sad news came from Port Talbot about clsoure of the steelworks. I had always been fascinated by the view from the footbridge at Port Talbot Parkway station. That bridge spans the platforms and you can stand directly above the many tracks running away far into the distance.

This project was my cue to write the poem about that view...

Making tracks

(On the footbridge at Port Talbot Parkway, 2024)

 

Steel lines run from steel town.

Tracks      next to tracks     next to tracks,

 

heading east as far as you can see, lines of possibility

side by side     by side    by side

 

all going  ...   anywhere else  

from yesterday’s redundant steel town;

 

to family and friends in castles and caravans,

cities and country, some in foreign lands.

 

Furnaces are cooling, as smoke drifts away

people are leaving,    leaving steel town

 

on tracks of steel,   lines by lines    by lines,

options side by side with prospects

 

wet lines shining in sun, tracks running like gold

away from steel town,  leading forever away

 

far from old steel town. Lines carry trains full of people

side by side    by side     by side

 

always going away,  only  away,

all      going     one     way.

 

To the New Year

To the New Year

You came in full of hope,

you’d been gathering it over the last few days,

chunks of optimism like sunshine

finding gaps between clouds.

 

You are an unexpected release from strapping

like a compressed bag of compost,

a tight plastic sack slit with a knife,

at first it holds its constrained shape

 

then it subsides, crumbles, unfurls itself,

hear it breathe as it expands

I put my hands in, feel new softness in the heart of it

its whispered promises.

 

What will we grow in this?

Everything is possible.

 

 

 

Clinging on

 Clinging on

I hadn’t even seen him

as I leaned into the shed,

 

put my hand on the lintel.

Then, a scratch on my hand

 

so feint I almost didn’t feel it

but I looked up.

 

A tiny fledgling swallow

a few weeks old

 

so light

but already slicked with indigo

 

a red smudge on his chin,

perched there

 

tiny claws like fine wires

cleaved to my finger.

 

He looked at me

I looked back at him.

 

A small silent moment

that early morning

in this big noisy bloody world.

Marilyn

Someone was asking the other day if I'd written any pantoums, so here's one. I think the form, with useful repetition of lines, works well with the subject. The poem is a response to Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych, right.

Marilyn

On display like cans of soup

stacked on shelves in a shop

her identical faces screened in silk

fifty images lined up in neat rows

 

stacked as if on shelves in a shop

a branded icon of the movies

fifty images lined up in neat rows

a perfect product of her time

 

a branded icon of the movies

in bright yellow, pink and blue

a perfect product of her time

until her shining star blurs

 

from bright yellow, pink and blue

to slated monotones

until her shining star blurs

as ink smudges over her image

 

to slated monotones

and she is blacked out

as ink smudges over her image

and she fades almost to nothing.

 

She is blacked out

fifty stills of her on the wall

but she fades to almost nothing

a ghosted outline of a movie star.

 

Fifty stills of her fill the wall

but she becomes invisible to us

a ghostly outline of herself.

And she died, just one, alone.