THAT  ADLESTROP  MOMENT

Train stops.
Stranding us in real life countryside.

Townies gobsmacked.
Silence attacks.

The world melting
in a heat haze.

Where has our real
reality gone?

Tracks lead away from us
be we are going

nowhere
fast.

As if the future
had ceased to exist.

We are like the male member
caught in the teeth

of a too hastily
done-up zip.

Yep,,,,,,,doesn't go up!
Oooops,,,,doesn't go down!

A kestrel free
of our dilemma.

Laughs at us
"Humans, eh....who'd 'ave 'em!"

Smaller birds gossip
discussing this all too human

situation.

I recite Adlestrop
in my mind

to my reflection
staring dumbly back at me.

"There is a countryside
in my face..."

I Marvell.

As if Nature
had invaded my physiognomy .

"Unwontedly...something
something something or other."

Oh bother!

"No one left and no one came."
The birds stop to listen.

"Yes, we remember Adlestrop!"
they twitter.

"Hear it one day
in what you humans

call
the Past.

Wot a laugh!

They unaware that there is only
one great big forever."

I fell silent.
Deserted by all thought.

"Give us some more
of that good old Adlestrop stuff!

The birds chirrup.

"No what less still and lonely fair
through cloudlets in the sky."

I ventured.

"Naw...naw...naw mate!"
a crow caws.

"The bit 'bout us birds
if you please!"

I cough and continue.

"Farther and farther, all the birds
of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire."

The birds all cheep and cheer.
"Hip hip hooray for Edward Thomas!"

The train remembers itself.
Rouses itself from its slumbers.

As if all this
had been but a dream.

"Yes, I remember Adlestrop"

But not all of it.

It was June.