Terminal by Simon MacCulloch

Somewhere in the city far from home
A railway station where the trains don’t stop
A place where echoing footsteps coldly drop
Into emptiness, partnered only
By a humming, blank and lonely
A power station where the dull ghosts roam.

I walked its platform as the evening fell
A long still dusk as summer softly ended
A long tired life of waiting unbefriended
With the emptiness quietly seeping
Into eyes long dry of weeping
Around a tongue with nothing left to tell.

I turned to go but then I saw behind me
The old iron gate had shut itself quite tightly.
Well, maybe just a routine gone through nightly?
But the emptiness and that wall
Said there’d been no gate at all
Only the blackened bricks that stared back blindly.

The platform stretched ahead, unyielding, hated
As darkness closed a lid upon the sky
To leave me with the power station’s sigh
And the emptiness. Time was short now.
Clambering down, I lay and thought how
Old tracks might yet bear moving freight, and waited.

About the Poet:

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and is a regular contributor to Reach Poetry, The Dawntreader and Sarasvati.