Fifteen Minutes
By Trevor Hewett

Here, where the train leaves,
people rush, sirens echo
from bulging streets of traffic,
litter blows down
scarred and broken platforms.

Through grimy glass,
a wasteland - dead factories,
scrap yards, backs of houses,
neglected gardens;
a sewage plant
sprays mists of water
in glittering sunlight.

Yet, even though the train crawls slowly,
it is barely fifteen minutes till
one world is left behind,
replaced by wilderness:
wide plains of low-tide mud,
ridged sand, shale, emptiness.

Beside the track, steep fields
of wind-flat grass, bent trees;
a fox stares, unafraid,
high cloud sweeps down
through the estuary.

An inlet holds a skeleton
with curling ribs, half-sunk;
a rising heron slowly flaps
towards a stand of tall, green trees....

....as if the land insists
that cities, people have no relevance here
where wildness breeds, persists;
where we are purposeless, ignored.

Trevor Hewett is an Englishman who lives and writes in his native Cornwall. Published widely in the UK and internationally, he has a short collection of work - 'The Patchwork Woman' - available from Mockfrog Design Press, Australia.