Annemarie Austin
On Trains
Track walking, father up front,
sleeper to sleeper, just not too much of a stretch
for the smaller one, half an ear
to the possible china-clay train’s advance.
In his footsteps. ‘I am so childish,
I could make a kite, catch goldfinches, or build
little ships.’ His handkerchief turned
parachute continues to rot in the garden tree.
Molly and the Captain chasing
a cabbage white. Is it true that through rain
all of a sudden a butterfly will
fly straight? Lines in the air join the three:
that smaller one without a shoe
but wearing her father’s giant sheepskin mitten,
the sister touching her shoulder,
the man concealed behind his viewfinder...
I never dreamed that he would
forget me, bringing up the rear on the raised track,
doing all the looking after,
hearing the singing in the rail before anyone.
Annemarie Austin’s fifth collection, Back from the Moon, was published by Bloodaxe in 2003. Very: New and Selected Poems will appear early in 2008. A former winner of the Cheltenham Literature Festival Poetry Competition, she lives in Weston-super-Mare.
Page(s) 45
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