Leaving
The train is the way,
the tracks a scar cut
deep in the land
you can’t help but touch.
Across the viaduct
and over the stinking
estuary, leave fields
behind for factories,
waste ground, horses
nosing rubbled grass,
past a desert of concrete
and blinking glass, and on
until you see the backs
of sleeping red brick
houses, places you’ll
never know: cramped
back garden, broken swing,
riot of bindweed choking
a breeze block wall. So early
sleep stays with you,
pulls you back, rocked
by the slackening diesel
engine, chanting: won’t
you come back, won’t
you come back. Morning sun
above the East Wall Road,
a crack of stone on glass
announces the beginning
of a different life.
Brian Kirk has published two collections with Salmon Poetry, After The Fall (2017) and Hare’s Breath (2023) and a fiction chapbook It’s Not Me It’s You (Southword Editions, 2019). His novel Riverrun was a winner of the Novel Fair 2022.