Romance

Romance

Catching the 09:12 to London Liverpool Street,
Three carriages
Pretending, playing grown-ups and I’m off to work.
I’ve never seen a platform more full.
Small town, big dreams.
I pass smiles about everyone
As they wrestle like jackals by the door, before
The woman all wrapped in faux fur
As she stands proudly in her two-inches
Ruby red.
Bustling past her finds the train beginning to shudder
Into a graceful bound across the countryside.
Two seats – one passenger devoted to the window.
We’re faster than anything now,
Angry and beautiful.
Trees dance past in a madness of viridian,
Trying desperately not to remember
That past November,
And fighting not to know that the same desolation is to come again.
Fast, fast!
And yet the world has tie to move around
The smallest, most elegant hawk
Hovering over an empty field.
Not one traveller thinks of death.
Equals.
From the humble teenager on a day out to nowhere,
To the black suits taking a table to themselves,
Absorbed in a little machine their fingers
Can barely communicate.
Stand, leave, more again.
The same wheel of characters
Twisting and turning and writhing and shouting through
A world that is never one thing twice.
Just when the romance has clawed in
And just when it feels like we’re a world of our own,
Passing through an unreal space,
And we’re moving swift as starlings over skylines
And we could reach forever from here,
A voice calls.
Sunken heart.
No more romance.
The child is back, groping the side of the train,
Leaping about and shouting:
“Again, again!”