Now the lights are coming on
pink and orange, white and blue
from this distance they seem to melt into an aura
a haze hung above this haunted city

A clock tower looms over the rails
passing through this place I've never stopped here
I know nothing about how it moves or swells or stalls
but the lights all blanket it so heavenly
I think to myself, I'd like to return someday

Always, I find myself on a train somewhere
drifting between, in and out of scenes
imaging all the lives with monumental memories
first kisses, lost midnights, fractured hearts
pinned to every lamp-post, on each street corner
an invisible plaque on a bench by a duck pond

The veil of lights changes subtly as I move away
a sea of twinkling stars 
as numerous as the lives they shine upon

I wonder if anyone has sailed through my hometown
wide-eyed as the train climbed northward
and catching sight of the teenage me cycling aimlessly
they briefly pondered, they casually considered
what experience may have been accumulating in my diary
beneath the harsh orange glow of an adolescence spent here

skinned knees, endless midnights, unrequited hearts
bottomless thought, wondrous wandering, learning and growing
wild fields, bonfire kisses, sunsetting rivers
and girls and friends and lonely brickwork railway arches

The rising smell of electric arcing
the illuminated sign, this town's bold name
none of this is as indelible as those combining lights
a speckled hillside of life at night
the busy brains, fretting frowns
all the love that there must be here
coursing through these forgotten places
and all the experiences 
accumulated by so many open hearts within them...

(Jan, 2014)