Train Timetables

Why should poetry be all about love?

Why should it be all of  despair?

Can’t it be about coffee cups and bar stools?

Can it be something of which we don’t care?

I committed to musing on train timetables

Not because I hold any devotion

Neither because I have a fascination

For box carriages and engines in motion.

But because, like the high peaked mountain

Like the elicit but romantic affair

I thought to and chose train timetables

Quite simply, because they were there.

There on the wall where they sit for view

For the uncertain traveller and some

Who already know their chosen platform

And what time their train will come.

Trains like lovers come and they go

We choose platform five or perhaps two

In hope that we’lll catch the next trip

And if not, then the one after will do.

The timetable stacks up with its numbers

With columns of certainty and sure

And I wonder if we added those numbers all up

Would we find one, in essence quite pure.

I wonder if train timetables can represent love?

Can they reflect death and despair?

Can they open the hearts of their readers?

Can they reach out to those in a stare?

 

My train timetable speaks to my heart

Glenroy Train, Flinders Street, Platform 5

Brings me closer to you my darling girl

And that’s when I’m truly alive.

 

Copyright © 2017 Grant Fenton – All Rights Reserved