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Natasha Anne Kelleher

REMEMBERING LEAMINGTON

This poem was commissioned to write by Artist Carolyn Blake about one of the paintings in her book The Unchanging Traveller published in March 2022


Motionless pensively alone on the platform

My young life returns lucidly to me

From the small window where I once lived yet transformed

Perfectly bridges my past to the present once again to see

As vividly as incandescent colours suspended in a rainbow

Stretched over and through the rain soaked clouds

Burst and flash across my mind's eye they ebb and flow

Yet those far far distant experiences as a lonely child

Took flight intangibly alighting aboard the trains

Watched from the window overlooking the rails beside

Under which my bed did lie sometimes my playing waned

I was drawn and stretched up to watch mesmerizingly beguiled

Eyes wide with wondrous curiosity sustained

Of rolling carriages balanced on noisy iron wheels filed

Shrouded in trails of coal dust and scalding steam untamed

Silhouettes of passengers yet only a glimpse barely reconciled

The night trains that whistled and awakened me

From either a nightmare or a faded dream

Sleepy still my eyes trailed dark ominous shadows of trains

Snaking across my bedroom ceiling as if somehow dangerously derailed

Deep into the night they trundled on and on

The sound echoed and echoed then into silence tailed

I tried to imagine the carriage's destinations

So longing to discover and unearth

Seaside mountains undulating vales a strong fixation

Foreign countries of the world I wanted to traverse

Yet they were kept within my inner landscapes

Until I had grown and fled the parental nest from birth

I am glad those old trains set me upon my trails

I have seen and been challenged by all of life yet still prevail

Now I have been drawn back to Leamington's tales

Where the joys of home never decline to set sail

For reflection introspection a quieter time

Where my heart and soul can be peaceful

Lying between those silver lines secrets lain silently

To be forever held my life's history permanently assigned


Copyright Natasha Anne Kelleher All rights Reserved October 2021

Image Friends of Leamington Spa = No Copyright Infrin

gement Intended

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