When I was a boy cycling home from school
on evenings in late summer when the drizzle fell,
I would stop and walk naked in an ancient wood I had to pass —
warm pools and sopping leaves beneath my feet,
scents of wet earth and early fungus on the air—
until I reached a certain tree-trunk lying on its side,
barkless and smooth as bone, luscious with dark slime.

Such excitements I had there, gripping the tree with my legs,
tight with blood, sliding slowly, my mind conjuring
the creature that dwelt within; her smiles and textures:
tangles of fine roots stinking of leaf-mould,
dark fruit heavy in the hands,
a sticky trumpet flower, its stamen a thick curl,
bright pollen crusting on my groin.

Later, my body washed in the soft rain, I dressed
and cycled furiously home to mum, for hot tea and brown eggs,
that I opened like the summer with my spoon.

A chain of days puffs from the old smoke stack
of a train that barely makes it up the hill,
and love sits beside me in a third-class seat,
while dreams nod in a corner on their own,
and soul is working somewhere out of sight.
Then I think there's nowhere else I'd rather be,
than on a train that leaves from what I know,
through the undiscovered landscapes of a life,
to that place we all must go to down the line.

As the sun comes tumbling down towards the dark,
the carriages are a flock of golden lights,
and the last points chatter slow as we pull in
to the shadow-casting city in its rose.
The ancient wheels drum-roll us up the platform,
as the old train draws wheezing to a stop
and I hear the engine gasp and then grow quiet.
Then soul steps off to do the thing that souls do,
as we others spot you watching by the gate,
where you've waited all these years to take us home.