If the voices were shadows, we’d call them
echoes. I know some, have heard of others,
and many are strangers: there are those
who have arguments to burn, the romantics
with love or explaining vibrant sex, and for
many it is all in the music. One has a blue
guitar, and I played mine in a compartment
on trips to London, back in the day when
there was room for this in flamboyant ways.
From station to station, familiars and new
talkers come on board, and many speak like
prose poems with lyrical lilts in their story
telling – or mystery, and sad thwarted things.
Why does one claim John Clare ‘puts it into
words’ he cannot find? Is this the echo?
Most have their personal say, even the clowns
speaking with big feet, and if too busy eating
donuts, poets can still make it sound beautiful.
What isn’t taboo is transgression: every
carriage can roll backwards for its arrival.
.
Mike Ferguson
Picture Rupert Loydell
.