In Transit
The children are waving.
Turning round in their seats
the scan the broad swathe
of the motorway,
making faces at football supporters
and old men in Metros.
Soon they’ll be riding
an empty ribbon of road,
getting a feel for green fields
and the swish, swish, swish
of drystone. They’ll wake next day
in their holiday home.
The children are waving,
at their mothers in the crowd
until the engine builds up steam
for its first exhalation.
Leaving what they know, they hold
on to teddies and parcels
of clothes. Soon they’ll eat
their paper-wrapped butties
not knowing where they’ll be
tonight or what strangers will come
and take them away. They’ll wake
in an unfamiliar room.
The children are waving
or are they stretching a hand
to steady their load? Carrying
what they can, with little ones
on their backs, they’ve walked for days
and have a staring look,
brows faintly puckered
above their clouded eyes.
They’re baskets of ribs,
flesh on bone, already
some of the babies
are covered in flies.
Page(s) 26-27
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The