The men in the window:
Gathered four-strong,
Ghosts, conversing,
White rush flickering through their transparency,
England, their England, spilling like slipstream,
Becoming past:
A homeland turned to dark vast cold speed.
.
Each halt brings resolution,
Lanterns throwing sepia cones
Through white flutterings;
You half expect to see the faun,
Umbrella raised, trot into view,
His winter interminable
(Instead more ghosts gather, grimly,
Discernable in the window).
.
Whiteness resists
The onward rush:
Unexpected hours pass until
England — our England? — is revealed anew.
The ghosts, in cut-glass clip,
Remark upon the strangeness:
The familiar made pristine alien in half-light
As if slipping through a wardrobe;
The shadowlands glimpsed for once
Through a glass, less darkly.
.
With morning sun
The ghosts fade fast,
Shrill ringtones, the workaday maul,
Encroaching upon,
Eroding, Winter’s thrall.
The train, at last, broaching London at a crawl:
“We’ve not seen the like since the last time.”
“It’s a wonder we made it at all!”
Oh, that is lovely. Nice hints of C.S. Lewis through it all. This is what poetry is for to make the mundane beautiful, to capture it for eternity. Or something.
Thank you! I was never sure I liked Narnia better when the snow went…
Just when I think the Captain can’t surprise me any more, he turns out a really lovely poem. I mean a REALLY lovely poem. I think that it’s evocotive writing of a very high order. It contains everything I like. It’s enjoyable in the first reading. It gets better with the second and subsequent readings. Further examination of each sentence reveals care, thought and a loving craft that contains the essence of good poetry: a desire to communicate an experience from one person to another. I absolutely loved it.
I am really glad you liked it, Bear; thanks so much for the kind words; it’s good to know I can stray off-piste from humour occasionally. I wrote it while trapped on the train in a blizzard, so I guess there was a kind of immediacy that helped me capture the moment.
When I was a teen I used to write lots more poetry; looking back on it, almost certainly truly dreadful, teenage, angst-ridden pap. I do it less frequently these days but try and take a lot more care over it.
Thanks again; hope see additions to the Bear Blog soon!