Recycling

L and I have been at my Mum's for a couple of days. She's ok - if cantankerous. Her back seemed not to be paining her much, though she said it was stiff in the mornings, and the problem with the shower is a structural one - currently a large step up to get in the cubicle (not sure why) - that she finds difficult to negotiate, as she does any and all changes of level.

Like old times, writing on the train on the way there. Some fragments...

The train flies along the line.
A banner of blue tops the window
and everything has its shadow.
The day cuts things out
and sticks them back on the world,
gives them outlines,
an air of importance.

Now in England on a red train
there is the small scratchy sound
of music leaking from headphones,
there are trainers and sneakers
brogues and biker boots
and the electric whirr of air con.
A man sings under his breath
another sleeps with his mouth open,
a little string of saliva attaching
upper lip to lower, sunlight
catching the smoothness
of his bald brown head.
Now at Stoke on Trent a grey train
waits at a platform,
a blonde woman on board laughs
still wearing her gloves.


Collecting rubbish on the train

Is that rubbish? asks the buzz-cut young man
with the black bin-bag, pointing
at our apple core where it rests
on the crushed empty juice carton,
his job to cruise up and down the aisles,
identify and remove the empty
the used, the discarded, being careful
to distinguish these from the half-full
the still in use, the still needed.