Night Trains

The people travelling sit suspended
Dead-eyed and listless, niether here nor there
Slumbering feotal curls in a four car coffin
Coiled and waiting to rise and walk again

Cold steel caskets hurtling through sleeping towns
Lights of their lives floating islands in darkness
Here in the belly of the serpent
Isolated, sodium-lit cradles
A world to itself, sealed to the outside

Brief intrusions from reality
New worlds, street-lit and strange
Some sleepers quicken and stretch
Stumbling out of their segue interrupted

Others enter, and bring their lives with them
It will not last, they will sit as we did
Slow, fall silent and curl up as we did
The night trains fugue will claim them as it did us.