My feet carry me through the barrier
Towards the train I should be on.
The world stretches her slender legs,
And the train pulls farther away 
the faster I run.
Except it doesn’t,
And I spill into the carriage long before it’s gone.

​

I am on my way home, but I am not
I am somewhere back on that platform,
Always spat on but never shone.
I am back there, or maybe further away,
Maybe I am in a hospital, or at a bar

​

Or maybe even back on that misshapen family holiday
So many years ago:
The beach in Cumbria that is planted in my youth
Where my next meal became ash-tray sand
From the biggest wave in the world;
Where I was frozen by the ocean’s icy grip
And stung by a thousand atomic needles along my spine.
Except I wasn’t,
I was merely nudged by the mundane cold
Of British waters, that ubiquitous drizzle

​

Which still patters persistently 
On the window of my phantom mind
On the windows of this train

​

that would have made for a far better poem
had it just been missed.