poetry
leaving edinburgh
ominous sound, the closing of train doors...
the city slides away, smooth as a dream...
darkness envelops, then light...
familiar sights slip by, new angles...
all backwards
so surreal to face backwards on a train
feels like someone pressed rewind...
soon I’ll be home and nothing will have changed
memories of these changes erased...
frost coats the pasture as the city slides away
cookie cutter houses under a fading blue sky
already familiar hills loom purple faraway
how quickly things change...
suddenly farmland and broken stone walls
the sun like a pale puddle
and here is the sea against still-green fields and ghostly trees
the sea that seemed so faraway
castle ruins beside the tracks
and my hill so far away, bathed in mist
then it’s gone how quickly things change
farmland and mirror pools and hills out of nowhere
this is my home, these colors, these shapes, this place
so familiar yet so foreign
impossible beauty and screaming wind
brown fallow fields and the black branches of bare trees
green pastures just clinging to life beneath the frost
a sky that dreams of snow and the skeletons of human relics
then the sea, flat and grey and smiling behind the curves of the hills
cold and clear weatherworn lighthouse...
I can’t comprehend all this beauty...