Return to Elmore Halt

Past Danger of Death pylons,
Rusted barbed wire,
Taking the muddied slope,
Brambles snagging,
To the disused track,

And now in the tunnel,
Where graffiti words shout,
Smile past, funk, vandal,
Sitting on a step ladder,
Catching breath,

As the wind wraps
My sockless ankles,
And following under
The skeletal bridge of trees,
Where time is thinner,

The faint driplet of the last rain,
Over moss ridges,
Bend below branches,
The deadwood snaps like old bones,
A filigree lichen,

And a low baby-blanket fog,
And now onto,
Out in the open,
The chalk escarpment subdued
In this dirty light,

A pheasant croaking takes flight,
As the wind thrusts the rain,
Across barren fields,
Trees intone the half lost tune,
Forgotten words remembered,

Unraveling line by line,

I find a place to shelter,
Along the track,
A broken hearth of brick,
Crawling ivy weaves its walls,
In the dust an iron grate rests,

Waiting,
Remembers the red-wing,
Picking along the track,
The wind and the rain thrusting,
The trees singing,

Here in Elmore Halt,
All land is muted,
Snow has started to fall,
Pitching on the track,
A gauze across the fields,

You walk, taught, alone,
Falling away.