ASHTON
the track
curves like a scimitar
I remember
being in a park in
Ashton on the red
steel roundabout
overreacher
and fell
that roundabout went
on revolvng, spinning forever
that red roundabout
or maybe it was green
and talking of green
I waa distracted thereafter
by what
had happened to
the countryside
wondering where
it had gotten to
and so
forgot my poem
on the train
that train winding its way
forwards to the millennium
ot
backwards in time
through toytown stations
where they loaded
real soldiers
some soon
stacked to be buried
piled up in ossuaries
others, as is the nature
of war, simply evaporated,
officially disappeared
and my poem out there
with other poems lost
or forgotten
poems out there too,
be it
recalled recounting
the horrors of war
but train
is at the terminus, no
more huff-puffing, or
smooth
electric or
even diesel
the countryside chaning,
the poems
No longer speaking the truth
they could not escape doing
this picture fading
all
those lines
yet unwritten, all those tracks
going somewhere
having nowhere left to br