My hands over handles and the studded upholstery
Reflective and cold as the strangers come close to me

Swaying like passengers stood on a boat
I'm fleetingly heartened by the accents I know

Picking them out of the bullying crowds
We're hurrying past unfamiliar towns

The streetcorners, bridges and shops that they know
Serenely suffused by a summery glow

The picturesque places they lazily go,
like postcards or paintings delivered back home

I'm rolling on by their entire other lives
Their lot on my mind and to them unbeknownst

Like a rousing of wind which as suddenly goes
For a moment we had almost been close

A mother of two and her children in tow
The three of them dressed for the perishing cold
An afternoon trip!

Her children never walk, but they run and they skip!
And I in their midst - the opposite sides of a
red-painted bridge

Coffee alone is a moment of mine,
An oval mug served by a girl with a smile
Dark coloured drips coming down at the sides..
crashing through time, like gas giants catching the light

And raging outside is the storm in it's tracks
Tall windows spare us the blustery flak
Moored for a moment we are comfortably sat
Our ghostly reflections are a film upon glass

The din of winter is a window away
I've come here to stay at my Grandmother's
The bedroom aglow in her yellows and reds
The lamp by the bed

Beckoned by hands and a magical timbre
I'm starting towards her in answer,
recalling her manner
Her habits preserved as in amber

Sat by her side and embracing her then
I'm suddenly a child again,
her eighty-two years to my ten

An ocean away in Colwyn bay,
a glamorous stranger is looking my way
tilting her head and lifting her shades,
her furrowing features are meeting my gaze

Shamelessly eyed from a platform away
As if she had something important to say
Then turning around with a curious frown,
she starts back towards her familiar town

To elegant houses of ashlar and brick
A terrace of Gothic adornments and frills
Victorian angles and white window sills,
becoming the specks which are dotting the hills

A town held aloft by a battered plateau
and anchored to ocean by columns of stone
A picturesque coastline, a spring getaway
The home of a stranger, her postcard landscape

The rattle of metal and the wheels over rails
The men wearing colours are starting to wave
My thoughts turning back to that taciturn dame
The din of the train means I'm pulling away