Ghost Station
Rosslyn
Wild garlic and rain in the woods and between invisible tracks
that lead from here to there I sense them glide
through their lost narratives down platforms of damp ferns.
Think of a bent hair-pin lodged for years under a wooden carriage seat
fallen from a stook of auburn hair, a single collar-stud trapped beneath
the floor that once fastened small intimacies behind a film of beaded glass,
or an old man's knotted hand, knuckles raw in the niche of his lap
carrying home a gift of speckled eggs. Imagine the pallor of rain:
ashen, pewter, stained watery-sheen along a backbone of glinting steel,
and shadows of coal-dust, steam and sparks on iron where green tongues
of larkspur grow. Turn your head and glimpse between verticals of larch
and beech blotched autobiographies like smudged footprints in wet grass.
Listen, where the wind throws back its dialogue of despair behind
the raindrops, acknowledging lives drained away, like a plume
of smoke recalled along invisible tracks by a damp bird's solitary song.
