Poetry Corner

Railway Path

Late winter light lengthens. Footpaths beckon: even the railway path that ducks under hooped blackthorn, laurel, hawthorn in a slow curve beside the tracks bearing trains to town.

By night flickering lamps filter fly-specked beams between skittish branches— or not—where some have long burned out. Trees wave & dip, shake out shadows longer than light across our path.

Sticks crack. Hard not to turn & turn again with a frisson of fear to see if we are followed.

Yet that shaft of terror stabs with a kind of childish glee. We walk on— eyes tricked, bemused by shifting clouds of white sloe-blossom ghostly in the dark; ears reaching for every sound.

But by spring daylight, all is changed, familiar, settled to its ordinary self. The railway path is a muddy way of new green leaves strung between the banks of blackthorn blossom. If wind is blowing, no one notices. We watch for an ancient walker who daily totters the path with his old terrier. We listen for the hiss & crackle of the rails that signal a train’s approach. It glides along, curved in the cutting below, almost silent.

Late for school, a boy hurtles past on his bike, shouts Sorry and is gone, like the train, like the shadows of the nights before.

© Lizzie Ballagher