Coming Home on the North Downs Line

From the Great Western main line

Cross country in a grubby train

From Reading 4B

A smudgy pencil of a platform

Crossing stockbroken hinterlands

Of pre-fab housing and forsaken warehouses

We shadow the chalk ridge of the Downs

Wokingham

Blackwater North Camp

Trees seem barely able to summon up the energy to bud

Allotments, a glass-less greenhouse

Bungalows and council houses

And an English flag

Ash

Guildford

A tunnel

To the North the Hogs’ back

Scrubby fields

We amble through Chilworth

In the window reflections

A woman in a headscarf

Tucked in to a Brendan Behan polemic

A woman in a pale mac

Leather bag on her lap like a small dog

Engrossed in daily dreams

Dorking Deepdene

Rusty rails

And what do the three horses

Make of us shuffling past

As the cold night approaches?

Ryegate

Redhill

At last Gatwick

On the Brighton main line