This Sunday, we are late getting away.
Our train – packed with travellers returning,
going; separating, connecting; heading home
for comfort or forgetting; for wedding feasts
and funerals; all these importances
are weightless, going nowhere.

And out there on the track, where
it’s possible to leap or stray, they’re
searching for the missing parts of
some poor desperate, whose life
has ended in a crush of happiness.

We are held for 90 minutes of calm
updates, as the search for remains continues.
As are other trains, queueing in their turn.
some in the consoling countryside,
others in stations, where impatient
lovers can fret upon the platforms.
On-board children may lose themselves
in small screen games, where levels
are attained, and many-headed monsters
explode like myths. It all adds up
to many days of life lost, in unspoken
inconvenience, or inkept patience.

Released [each finger, foot or eye
accounted for], the train speeds on
and life resumes. I think about
a train ahead shepherded away
for cleaning lest the ended life
still clings to wheels or motors.
And a driver whose shift is ended
entered into lists for counselling.
Emails go to all the passengers
with instant compensation for their loss.

The sun shines on the brilliant fields
of June. Church spires pin their hopes
above their peoples, cemeteries sleep
on beside the tracks, and weekend
leisure heads towards its end,
as the mowers and the cricket bats are put away,

Out there, concealed behind the lovely greens
of fields, the gardens spruced and tended
just beyond the slick and silver rails,
more jumpers wait, their minds made up, their hold
on life resolved, their farewell secret made.