Notes from the Constanta train station
 
At the shore of impossibility
last moments come to nothing
all our plans die in the salt air
of another new day on the black sea.

There is a sadness in the way
we leave the ocean in summer
that no cocaine laughter
or Polinka smiles can endure.

The heat oppresses.
Nothing good lasts.
The beach dreamers, hippies,
day trippers and holiday makers

are slumped in the Constanta
train station, surrounded by
dying sunflowers.
They did not find love or redemption

on the last shores of Europe
and must go, blinking,
to their own realities
the holiday not being theirs anymore,

never having been theirs, to hold.
We must let go the salt from our lips
the sand from our hair, leaving trails
of it for miles.

What awaits them all?
The ones who leave?
The ones who stay?
It’s impossible, in these last moments,

to feel the ocean all around me
like the belly of a whale.
It seems that summer is over
and all our time has run out.

I exhale as the train
takes me through fields of wildflowers
to England
and eventual home –

time having been and gone
and everything coming to nothing
and still so far to go.

Julie Egdell is a poet from North Shields. Her debut collection Alice in Winterland (Smokestack) explores her time living in Russia. She received an Arts Council grant to develop it into a multimedia show performed in the UK, Finland and Russia.