Portal at Fenchurch St. Station
Dickensian gloom
An autumn drizzle dampens
the station entrance.
A ticket inspector
in silver buttons nods
me through the barrier
My first half-day free
of dead-reckoning in five weeks
I buy a return ticket to Chalk Farm
underground station
The long haul up Primrose Hill
Umbrellaed commuters stare
at my swagger
Heavy steps an’ little uns
Heavy steps and skipped ones
The cleaner answers my knock
She’s at Les Marécottes
A week in the Valais Valley
with her class
Pity, Julie loved to watch the lascivious antics
of macaques at the monkey house
Later, we’d chill listening
to Beatles records.
Take a bottle of airén from the last case
liberated by her father
at Córdoba in '36
Belay that outing
I've missed her, and that is that
A 2T engine blows superheated
steam from a water trap
Warm condensate envelops
me in a grey mist
I trot through
A hidden voice speaks through the fog
‘Plenty of time, Sir.’
The Tannoy bursts into life
A woman’s wooden voice annunciates
‘The train on platform four
is the 12:24 for Tilbury . . .’
her plummy accent reverberates
among the purlins
A courting couple squirm
on a bench
A bare thigh lifts
to pull my eye
A porter winks,
‘Young love hey, Sir’
"Yes, indeed."
I buy a paper at W. H. Smith’s
I ruminate on what could have been
Julie’s play-acting wearing my uniform
The scrambled egg on my cap
did something for her.
A pigeon squawks underfoot.
The train puffs, chugs and puffs out
of the station. Rat-a-tat-tat
rat-a-tat-tat.
The smell of coke hanging
on the engine's chuff
Rat-a-tat-tat
The rhythm changes over the points
te-te-dum, te-te-dum
nothing to be done
Down the embankment
a housewife happily beats
the life out of a carpet
A horse tosses
it’s feedbag for scraps
Workmen congregate like rodents
The shriek of a factory hooter.
I lean back into an antimacassar
Five weeks to Woolloomooloo
Summer in the Antipodes
Helen's tanned torso
at Rushcutter Bay
scrumptious in her red silken
polka-dot bikini.
******
Portal at Fenchurch St. Station
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- Location: Between the mountains and the sea
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Re: Fenchurch Street Station
Good writing, especially that lovely last stanza. My only suggestion... some stanzas, though well written, don’t seem crucial. I would rather get to that fab closer sooner.
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- Posts: 2683
- Joined: 03 Jun 2016, 21:03
Re: Fenchurch Street Station
The dialogue & details are delicious!BobBradshaw wrote: ↑15 Jul 2021, 20:27Good writing, especially that lovely last stanza. My only suggestion... some stanzas, though well written, don’t seem crucial. I would rather get to that fab closer sooner.
Re: Fenchurch St. Station
Your poems often have such love and sweetness to them and lovely writing. I agree there is too much. It’s distracting. But, then, I’m such a minimalist; I could probably have a lot more details in my poems.