The railway landscape rushes headlong past me
as if I'm falling through hedges and trees.
Everything is gone in an instant,
combed immediately behind my ears.
Sitting on the train, facing the direction of travel,
my journey flows over the tracks,
like time itself.
Each station is a brief curiosity,
before the train plunges again
through the cascading land.
No one in the carriage, including me,
appears troubled by sitting on this hurtling arrow.
As if waking from a dream,
it comes as a shock when the guard announces,
‘Swansea next station stop’.
Like an unexpected diagnosis,
the words seem just for me.
There is an immediate gathering of practical thoughts,
bundling personal objects into my bag,
putting away my phone, pondering the cold look
of the weather outside.
Then the awkward waiting,
the passengers watching me anxiously
as the final moments pass.
For them, I have become ‘the one who is leaving’,
‘the one who will journey no longer’,
an emptiness about to happen.
The train slows, and the terminus,
at least for me, approaches.
I feel I have arrived too quickly.
I still have not looked at the book I brought with me,
the one I was so keen to read.
I regret I did not use the time as well as I could.
I worry about stepping off the train with no one to greet me,
the loneliness of a busy station.
And there is something just too final,
like death itself,
when the machine at the gate takes my ticket,
and gives me nothing back.