Making Travel

A journey without a train’s atmosphere
seems less a going – like being seated
at the stage of a populated theatre with
no clear destination and no-where to
take unhappy refuge or be safe from
imagined endings

Passengers aboard make give and take
eerily accessible, reading nuances in hand-
held gizmos played with dangerous dexterity
– bathed subtly in ear-plugged solitariness
smiling vaguely into void of implacable
railway carriage inter-communication

Maybe getting there explains – or maybe
it’s me who sees grandiose veneer; these
vacuous faces posturing in an ancient
passage of rites to suburban idols and the
dilettantes representing plastic nothings to
no-one in particular are easy reads

Minute scenes break play occasionally
create sanctuary – it was sunlight today
flickering on passengers, took my breath
away; no-one saved it for posterity – no-
one claimed the weighty insight it gave
entrained as such but left to me...
© 10 February 2011, I. D. Carswell