A BOY GOES TO SWANAGE

First published January 2006

When I was small, each year we'd take a summer holiday, in Swanage where the turquoise sea has carved a soft green bay

Where knees meet waves and spade meets sand and tongue meets sweet ice cream

By train we'd go from Waterloo - the train was hauled by steam!

I see it when I close my eyes, my memory is good; compartments just like cloisters of moquette and varnished wood

Fishnet rack of luggage, full, above each seaside poster, while patchwork hills race by outside our twelve-car roller-coaster

Another engine shed we pass, another big goods yard, where I count the plumes of steam I see from engines working hard

On viaduct we fly so high where whistle echoes loud across a valley seen below through diaphanous white cloud

Dank brickwork veiled by pummelled steam now blots the window glass, for our corridor of cloisters must through a hillside pass

The tunnel wall hosts amber squares of dim electric light, percussing to the bogies that fill this man-made night

The Silver sky dazzles me, the bogie clatter fades as steam refracts the sunshine in ivory cascades

The wires of the telegraph so slowly rise and fall, draped upon their passing poles at crazy angles all

I roam the dancing corridor and burst with joyous zeal at whiff of seaweed from a creek, we cross on rumbling steel

"I see the sea, I see the sea"  I shout to mum and dad

"Be patient, son, we're not there yet"  they tell their little lad

I fall asleep at Wareham, to rest my worn out head, and slumber still at Corfe Castle to dream of days ahead

But when I wake my hair is grey, reflected in the glass, and a mobile phone is telling me much time has come to pass

Yet still I'm on the train and still, the steam is drifting by, and still excitement fills my heart, though now I realise why

Though all's the same at Corfe Castle, as far as I can see, the difference is my grandson who is gazing up at me

STORMY NIGHT FISH

Previously unpublished

Pungent halitosis is a gas-lamp’s hiss, a gas-lamp’s hiss is this

In an enclave small, of pallid gloom, a tired old, shabby waiting room where warm I wait, observe, and no detail miss

Then out I go to cold night air, with tingling, prickly stand-up hair where a storm draws near and rumbles while I abide

Fat drops ping and fat drops splat as gathering rain strikes this and that, and a gas-lamp platoon, affrenzied with moths, rides a night sky that with anger froths

On the gantry tall, still the semaphores say, in glimmering red, no train on the way

Yet I wait for the fish train from Immingham due, London bound, to come thundering through

Signalbox interior, dim yellow light, dim yellow light tonight

A lonesome man, behind the glass, pulls levers and pulleys for the train to pass, while a squall picks up and shrills with icy bite

‘Left Luggage’ sign, squeaks and sways, squeaks and sways and rocks

In vitreous waves, rain now descends, while the vault of Heaven, harsh thunder vends, the station bleached by lightening shards, high voltage shocks

From aloft comes the drone of the Devil’s choir, each chorister grim, a telegraph wire. And amid this din, a clatter I hear as a semaphore signal is set to ‘Clear’

Soon a loco sneezes upon silver rails, on silver rails exhales

T Rex of steel, with slapping feet, powered by flames and dripping heat, igniting sleepers with sparks of golden tails

A quaking platform is a freight train’s kiss, a freight train’s kiss is bliss, when rippling trucks of rust and grime, jostle and joust, and clash and chime. A young heart pounds and thrills at fun like this

Fulminating through belching steam has come a drummer marching a steely beam. In nudging verse, a barked refrain while truck wheels tap-dance with hat and cane

I watch wide-eyed until, at last, the fish and their Guard have hurtled past, then head for home, just ten years old, with trousers wet and fingers cold

An angry mum and dad is the price I’ll pay, the price I’ll pay today

Yet warm dry clothes, and supper hot, will be, absolved, my happy lot. Then to bed I’ll go and dream sweet dreams of my next trip to the railway

GHOST TRAIN

Previously unpublished

The twinkling stars were sucked up like dust and consumed by a twisting fire as the night mail sped with a sulphurous gust towards its fate so dire

And now, this night, each year since the crash, the mail self-exhumes to relive the dash, rocking through shadows on moonlit rails in the jigsaw puzzle of night; a menace advancing on shooting star tails like an igneous meteorite

This stampede of wheels, this engine that thumps and fouls the night air with acrid lumps, beats the sombre hills like a dirty rug then snags and tears them to shreds, while a harvest moon big enough to hug disappears in a shower of threads

Sometimes I gasp, if move, I dare, at this demonic thing that shouldn’t be there

Yet a silvery brook breaks up into squares reflecting the lights of the mail, as the footplatemen chant their echoing prayers, doomed by a broken rail

Now I’m all that remains of the world it destroyed, a mourner bereft in a loveless void.

'That driver was mine' I cry at this ill-fated train 'and betrothed was our love to last'

Which is why I return again and again, to my lover, a ghost speeding past

 

THE BEAST OF THE MOOR

A nonsense poem

Ask any footplateman if he’s ever observed a firebox goblin and been unnerved

Or the smoke from his chimney form a perfect ring, or flames dance a jig or some other thing

Or steam catch the sun and make a rainbow, with pressure gauge high and safety ablow

And he’ll tell you ‘yes’, he’s seen all these things, and knows every wonder that raising steam brings

He’ll tell you that once, on his way to the coast, his night train gave birth to a moonlit ghost

And once on a freight train, noisy and slow, his steam made high summer look laden with snow

But I know one driver whose engine at speed, spawned a strange beast called a ‘gallaptopede’

And contrary to what you’d anticipate it failed, this beast, to dissipate

With a face of steam and legs of smoke, and halitosis so bad it made rabbits choke

It lingered aloft, then drifted down, and danced on the grass like a gangling clown

Shaped not unlike an ironing board, it had a huge lazy eye and was fiercely square-jawed

And because it never quite faded away it gallops moor to this very day