Fleeting stations

through which all things must pass.

Trains mercilessly invade

plans carefully laid,

scattered

like tangents in transit,

you forget where they connect,

waylaid in this depot

with barely a moment to reflect

that thoughts and emotions

are only outposts along the tracks.

Drawn from out of cracks in the earth

like an expectant birth,

the womb bulges,

stretched to the till

everything emerging from tunnels,

like insects from an anthill,

into the rythmic enigma of change

that you’ll attempt to arrange

into a coherent design.

There is a stationary map

where the motion gets trapped

in the riddle of its lines.

 

Time,

grave schoolmaster

correcting with sticks,

confronts the nervous with ticks.

The pressure to decide

when to move

when to abide

by an almost religious form,

crucified.

The mechanism’s in place,

the dominant figure

in this transient theatre

is the clockface.

Schedules shuffle

with spinning metal