Flying a train home

A carriage – boxy - like a temporary home,

traveling faster than man or woman chanced

a century ago, has luminescence

seeking to split air with its momentum;

a flying caravan that will, one day, age and

crumble, travel back to elemental earth-fire

like every field and wall and mountain rush-

ing past. Inside, newspapers rustle, work-harden

and people shout into their mobiles ‘I’m on

the train..’ often with a patronizing

edge, smug, inside a metal cylinder.

Perhaps big torpedoes feel secure

and, for a while, defy space-time and all

our hard-to-face inevitable fresh decay.