Forever Waiting at the Station

Credit: Kostas Mantziaris/ Reuters

I don’t want to write a poem about it

but the images just keep coming at me.

I don’t want to imagine the impact,

I don’t want to imagine the screeching on the tracks,

the instant transformation of metal into scrap,

the first three carriages into total debris.

So, I concentrate on the graffiti on the still intact carriage

laying on its side, half on the tracks, half on the ground.

I fix my gaze on leaps and bounds depicted by flying fish,

imagine them swimming the other way to escape the death trap.

I imagine them swimming still as a crashed vessel

is lifted from behind them, now a sagging accordion.

I imagine them squirming and slipping in a motionless wrestle

to take ears from the last dropping notes, going deep, going long.

I see them leaping, I see them jumping, swimming up

against the tide of time for passengers to be picked up.