Mountain Train

Jennospot 114  Mountain Train

By special request, Oi've been asked ter put a poem up on moi blog; so 'ere it is: It's by Peter St John. Oi 'ope yew loike it. Any'ow there's a noice picture...

Mountain Train

Chuffing upward from the plain

Skyward climbs the charm-like train;

Pinion tic tac on the rack.

Watch-like, clock-like, mounts the track;

Mountain goat with iron wheels;

Rounding bends with squeaks and squeals;

Tunnelling the buttress through:

Just another cheese to chew.

The valley seems a toy-town place

Seen from heaven's peer-down space.

Droll-doll chalets, sprinkled sparse,

Spick upon the cow-cud grass.

Tie by tie, the rails astride,

Ladder up the mountain side;

Thinly-lean, a two-pronged harrow,

Swissly-clean and spindly-narrow,

Parallel they never meet

Except... up in the sky, to greet

A Gruyère moon; looming there

In the crystal Swiss-wine air.

Or at the sun, join in one,

Fusing from a switchback run

 On an undulating way.

Pop-stop eardrums feel the rise;

We ride together to the skies.

No more trees; they're left behind...

High, the wind is too unkind.

Squeezing on a freezing bridge;

Ease along a heart-stop ridge;

Where peaks in this vicinity

Point us to infinity.

Down below all nods and plods:

At Heaven's portal we are gods.

And god-like, one would higher go;

Higher than the peaks and snow.

But... down one must towards the dust,

In wonder-lusting train unjust.

Entrusting Hope to justify

The return ticket from the sky.

The single strand now splits in two;

Divides One into me and you.

Down we rumble, charnel bundle...

Mindful as we earthwards trundle

Of rapture; but euphoria fails...

Fading on descending rails.

Below the air is thick.