Like a simile...

I thoroughly enjoyed the poetry workshop I went to on Saturday, the awful journey I had to get there notwithstanding. The specific topic was the use of metaphor and simile and there was a lot of very lively discussion about what constitute good and bad examples.

We finished, as we always do at these things, with a writing exercise. There were several different tasks to choose from and I chose one based around writing several smaller observations of a single scene. What I produced on the day was sort of OK - I was probably less happy with it than others seemed to be - but nothing I would have kept in that form.

So I've now done some more work on it and the final poem is presented below. Before we get to it, a single note concerning the poem and the day. I said I had a terrible journey there, and so I did, my train was eventually forty minutes late and it was only because I had allowed a lot of time that I was a mere fifteen minutes late. When it came to the poem I decided to get something positive out of the experience.



So here it is.

Wolverhampton Station, 4th June

three teenage girls
bare-shouldered and bare-armed
huddle beneath the station roof
like ducklings beneath the river bank
watching raindrop static in the water

a tattooed man
his arms a map of his soul
chases a bouncing dog  and is
devoured by the open carriage door
before the train slithers down the track

a chinese boy
tries repeatedly to ask
the unresponsive station guard
the way to platform three but he
is grey and graveyard-statue silent

an elderly woman
with chin-high buttoned coat
pulls bulging shopping-trolley luggage
as a child pulls a wooden train
as if she has mistaken here for Tesco

a wire-spectacled man
with food stains on his jacket
and shirt tails bidding for freedom
follows crazy-paving paths
that no one but he can see

and I for my part
look to station board and track
in Wimbledon spectator motions
both inform me of the self-same truth
my train it seems is still delayed