Train
You’d have thought
that my journeying
from Telford to London
would be enough time
to read these poems
to darn a jumper
to stare out the window; but
between the announcements
the ticket inspection
the dark-light of tunnels
the loud conversations
the fast-moving humans
our slowing at stations;
all I have managed
is a few short emails, and to watch a man with thick black moustache:
A luggage-rack reflection, he eases off a tinfoilcover, spoons,
with love, the cherry yoghurt, to his lips,
avoiding drips on to suit,
pale pink shirt and, instead of a tie, a thing
whose name escapes me but it hangs like a ribbon, holding his identity.
Once scraped clean, pot put away in Tupperware, tangerine untouched.
It strikes me, later, at a party, where a man is talking lanyards; that
perhaps too, I was watched – with tilted head, and upturned eyes; and
how the train had wrapped us all, like segments in an unpeeled orange.
Nadia Kingsley is a poet and publisher. She is currently collaborating on an Arts Council England funded performance : e-x-p-a-n-d-i-n-g THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE IN 45 MINUTES, in a mobile planetarium dome. http://www.fairacrepress.co.uk/