Poem: To the Northern Station

They come at me – and pass

like missed trains, failing

to stop on schedule, trailing

a line of lamp-lit heads.

I used to know them as faces

in remembered scenery,

and how the light fell, or rain

held off, and what was said.

       *

At the fag-end of a long haul

I’m looking out on what’s expected:

mountainous horizon,

boys kicking hard against shale

to swing up and onto

empty carriage stairwells,

while sun glints on minarets,

wrecking yards, apartment blocks.

In the aloof vacancy of a ticket hall

puddled with water, nothing moves.

We push at the door, step outside –

and then everything does.

Tom Phillips

Taken from the e-pamphlet The Dream Library & Other Poems (Various Artists 2013, variousartists986@gmail.com)