Express Train
Door open,
hurtling loud and at full speed
towards my destination,
beneath me a blur
of mounded ballast
and withered grass,
the world coming into focus more
the further out I look -
graffitied fences, factories
still wearing the soot
of steam trains from decades
before, a mountain of stacked
wooden pallets, car wrecks
piled four high.
Late sixties, on my way
to work on the 7.10
from Alberton, all stops
to Cheltenham then express
to the City. The station names
flash by, Woodville, Kilkenny,
Croydon, Bowden all pass dreamlike
through a disconnected stare.
A vague residual left by the thoughts
back then still seem to slop
around my memory. I can feel
panic claw on the window
trying to get out.
I arrive fifty five years later,
on time, here, a world away
looking out on a soft fall
of summer rain. My journey
has gone by all too fast
on the 7.10 express train.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2025
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