SUMMIT TUNNEL

FROM NEW COLLECTION - "THROUGH AN OPEN WINDOW’’

Summit Tunnel

The homeboy patrolled the platform
hauling a case full of troubles;
a youth, unprepared, undercooked, fidgety,
4 minutes from departure.

He could see his half-life below,
wished to wallow in its familiar frown,
allow his timidity licence to return
to the arms of invisibility.

The village continued its sophistry;
July sunrise presented limestone ripples,
clouds created kaleidoscopic greens,
the old mill beseeched him, remain
within its simplicity,
content to drink life from cupped hands.

A cursory glance to the exit;
would he prove them right?
'would he eckerslike',
yet fearing the train's arrival
he hoped it would run out of steam,
hiss to a stop, forever
lost in the tunnel a mile
from his inward mitherings.

Through branches of dappled summer, 
he looked down at the bus stop
from where his ride to that point had
terminated at the limits of imagination, 
while he waited for adventure
far beyond ambition.

Taking patchwork images,
he ironed them into solitary thought;
the flighty, flirty, giggles & curls
wanton, wretched, innocent girls
who’d hit harder than the ballyrag,
chased harder through the night,
laughed louder on waking.

Maybe he sought self-worth
from lips of experience?
the feature, without outtakes,
maybe he'd return to rule the village
like the fox in an Aesop Fable?

By way of distraction
he allowed himself to imagine;
Manchester, Birmingham, Exeter, Plymouth,
alien places printed on a travel warrant;
thinking them familiar,
reminding him of a football coupon.

Two garrulous women, with matching expressions
seemed to own his thoughts,
Would he, Could he? Should he?
nosey little witches!

The echoing announcement of the arrival
of the 08:14 Manchester Victoria train
jolted him, ‘least it offered the opportunity
to relieve his flatulence’.

‘Damn the summit tunnel’
how could it allow this Naglfar carriage
to lap at the corpse of his childhood?
Yet as he slumped into his seat, new life
breathed through an open window.