Lose antennae? I’m a beetle!
Not one bug in Aleghenny
(at least, none you’ll ever meet’ll)
lose antennae.
Luck with chicks? I won’t have any!
Directionless, centripetal,
wireless wimps are ten a penny!
What now? Curl up? Adopt the foetal
position? Move to Kilkenny?
No proud pest in any street’ll
lose antennae.
A brew-loving guy from Kilkenny
is mad! His wife spent their last penny--
on a cask of green beer?
No, she hopes to bring cheer
with green cookies~~poor clueless Jenny!
Paddy went tae the Curragh racecourse
Bet his all on the favourite horse
Noo he’s back in Kilkenny
Withoot even a penny
Tae cry in his Guinness wae remorse
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.
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