And then was the Winter

asphalt buried for months on end

hope frozen into a rictus

of discontent

birds all black, a St.Vitus dance

in greying skies vainly searching,

sludge in the veins

trees by fossilized distance framed

swans skating

telegraph poles bending low

draping sinews in dislocating snow.

 

Here at Buckingham (British Railways)

a good train delayed and overdue,

its distant beak a confusion of steam

fretted in the aching snow

Perilous cold leaching the ground

and then the distant signal rose

a plume of white refreshed the sky

exploding from the chimney and cocks

A departure from Banbury a dream away.

 

Now,with dead weight on the move

grudgingly it shouldered forward its heap of spoil

scalding the platform near where I stood

bound for Bletchley and Verney Junction

in the Winter of sixty two and three.