departures

As the train leaves you for another station
the LED wipes out its past, recalibrates
the future. From the platform, an ordered
street of terraces is all you see, red-brick dull,
their gardens crazy-paved with cars.

But as you pass, the vacant banks
of shuttered eyes give way to movement –
a seam of ordinary light. You hear food
making its way to tables. Beyond the doors
hallways gridlocked with laptops,

homework, shoes – all parked for supper,
laughter, the hand-to-hand of pass-
the-parcel meals. There’s the other-room
ranting of the tea-time news: a distant tune
you almost recognise. How small the universe

against such bigness. Earth sobs at the passing
of another train. Streetlights take your steps.
At home – no signal, no texts. But emails come,
the land line stirs – a voice throttled by its loss.
You watch five apples soften in their skins.

A winner in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize