Bordeaux Bay

Bordeaux Bay
Bordeaux Bay by Guernsey-based artist Tony Taylor

Sunday, 18 September 2022

TRAINING EXERCISE

Travelling through France by train recently, I found myself recalling the many 'train poems' I've read throughout the years and wondered why I'd never written one myself. Determined to remedy this omission, I wrote these three short rhyming verses.












TRAIN POEM


Train poems abound, or so I’ve found

and Adlestrop just comes around

in every new anthology

while Larkin’s Weddings seems to be 

the one that resonates with me.


Then there’s that fine poem by Jane Mosse

the Lit Fest banned, the fools, their loss,

a gentle train-refrain and yet 

some words in it caused them upset.

What made them fret, then? I forget.


Now I, too, write a train poem, why?

As fleeting images race by,

hills, farmland, houses, horses, trees,

provoking a response, they tease.

Words swarm inside my head like bees.


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