'Dawn from the 7:07' by Samuel Birnie

Image by Niels Weiss from Unsplash

I wrote the poem below when I was on the train from Redruth to my teaching job in Fowey. I was in a fairly dark place at the time. My relationship with the mother of my children was breaking down, I was sleep deprived, struggling financially and overworked. Rather than doing marking or lesson planning on the way to work, I found myself staring out the window and completely losing myself in the twilit scenes outside. This poem came out in a rush there and then, and needed only a little technical tweaking in the following days.

Dawn from the 7:07

On the train to work I press my face

Against the glass, cup my hands

To shade the light, to better see

The silhouetted landscapes, the liquid light of dawn,

The night being eaten by the unseen sun,

Luminous, coalescent colour,

Amber bleeds into apricot, to coral,

Salmon, sienna, blood orange, aubergine, onyx –

There are more pigments in one patch of sky

Than I have words to name them –

Lilac-frosted fields, the violet ghosts of villages,

Then lit stations, black docks, grey industrial steam;

Worlds tumbling by in the twilight, cut off

By speed, space, and a pane of glass.

I cup my hands but I still see

The electric light, my reflected face.

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Words by Samuel Birnie

Edited by Alicia Burden