DEPARTURES
People spark from trains,
phosphoresce across the concourse.
They're the lucky dice,
released from a croupier's metal shoe.
Into another tumbler,
a sprinter heading south,
I am going home, back to the wife and family.
But I'm also going back: my dice is black on black:
I see my carriage cross the sand and trundle through the waves;
the track wends through the spume, spray runs down the windows.
I am blinking, like the engine's windscreen wipers,
trying to clear the tears at leaving you.
I crush my eyes together,
but I'm peering at the billboard:
white dice letters flicking over black.
Platform 1? Platform 3? A platform on the cold North Sea?
Departure and departure: it re-winds every time,
my destiny is leaving you.
I head for desolation. Every fortnight.
John Easton
STEPPING OFF THE TRAIN
Hello Aberdeen!
Good morning citizen seagull!
A hundred thousand welcomes on your croak!
May you lord it over Union Street forever
Cryptic as a conversation lozenge.
Sheena Blackhall
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