Train Of Thought

Clapham Junction Siren


Looking out of the train window he thinks,
that only you and he know you’re there,
where the buildings end, in an attic
sky climbing, on your own, except
for your plant that called to him
like a siren or Rapunzel’s hair.

All his life he’s travelled
this same tube, same route, rutted
into the ordinariness of day,
clutching at his sandwich, his job
to move things around, and then again,
move them on from node to node.

Missed the last train he could have run on
needs squeezed like teenage spots, to dry
out like thoughts, he used to waste on craving
something better than he could afford,
something above, beyond the dull
sorting into sensible self.

With your Yukka in a golden pot, you stood
looking sadly down as he gazed,
up to your lonely window,
yearned to fit himself in and fill you,
he was pulled tight as cotton through
the needle’s eye, thought you might be
on the other side of ordinary -
his ticket out, his transportation.