Breathe

A minor blip

A small setback

A little shake where a shake shouldn’t be

Did anyone see?

And breathe

The train travels relentlessly

Towards the Spanish border.

It’s dark outside and I’ve slept for a few hours.

Take a photograph through the window

No idea where we are but as good a place as any to freeze a moment.

 

Intermittently we speed through a sleeping station,

Ochre shadows and lamp lit stairs.

For a second there the silhouettes of houses.

Perhaps in one sits a man who cannot sleep,

The only sound to break his silent contemplation being

The muffled thunder of the occasional night train.

After some while hairline cracks of red on the horizon begin to break the black.

Vague outline clouds and ghost trees, fences, fields, graffiti on a bus shelter

As grey turns to brown and yellow to green.

The blur-past stations now possess occasional familiarity as stations often do,

Kindly and reminiscent of past adventure.

The train slows as it crosses the border.

Little changes outside except the signage,

But sleepy eyed within our carriage a sense of quiet contentment awakes.

A new day in a new land.

I alight at Portbou and watch as the train pulls onwards

Stretch and smile at the cat outside the cafeteria door,

Blink up at the church and the blue-grey vista of rolling Catalunya

Forty five minutes until the train to Figueres.

Time for coffee.

I rummage for my notebook and pen and turn to a fresh page.

I place the pen in readiness beside the book,

Sit back and breathe.