Flying bullet for you

Leap lightly now,
Leap darkly,
The train throws

Its classic conversation
With England, here
Across the rain;

And skies like lead
Make judges plead
For some sun.  See,

It's begun – the journey
By day, lit by
A little horizon,

Mostly what's gone before;
Hand over your
Ticket, friend –

And bend, sway, as over
The rolling land
Your carriage says

What it feels to go
Through a country
Plain as night,

Clear as clay;
Not ever talking,
Never stopping;

Sipping Twinings;
No bags of shopping;
Traditionally, going,

But disrupted, mind,
Bit by bit, O,
For being so happily at play.



*Todd Swift is Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at Kingston University, Editor of Eyewear, Oxfam GB Poet-in-residence and a Tutor for The Poetry School.  With Evan Jones he has edited Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology (Carcanet, 2010).  He is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently Experimental Sex Hospital (Argotist ebooks, 2010).