# 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*

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