Thursday, April 21, 2011

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

1 comment:

Wastedpapiers said...

Nice - echoes of Betjemen - woo woo!