Stranger on the platform, Stockwell station

Passengers rise
from their seats as though their names
have been called
and a few jolts later the night train rifles
into Stock-
well station. Outside full moon faces
whoosh past
on a conveyor belt and get caught in the field
generated by
the arriving train’s motion, agitated
and converging
on its doors, jostling towards its event
horizon.

A woman outside on the platform looking
in through curving
Plexiglas looks away quickly, but not quickly
enough. Her eyes
are momentarily entered, a ludicrously intimate
instant of
humanity that cannot so easily be
undone,
and though they dwell downwards they cannot
detach themselves
from this barbed line. The door stays closed.

She would
be considered attractive by many. She has
fine lines
around her eyes whose colourless upper lids are
spherical and taut,
as though weighed down by her lashes. Her high
cheeks darken
betraying an inner struggle, a conscious subduing
of an instinct-
ive openness. Her tilted brow reflects
the overhead
lights, her brow twitches
slightly.

The door stays closed.
Elsewhere, it is Wembley before God
Save the Queen,
or the stretched out Wimbledon second between
first ball toss
and crushing racquet thwack, or a High Court
judge’s swallow
before he delivers his verdict. But this,
this is Stockwell,
and the woman dares look up as a klaxon
screams
and the door opens for bodies
to flow.


(c) 2012 Poetrivia