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.