Newcastle Central Station
If I could come back from the dead
I’d want to wake
in this warehouse of light,
under a sky
of white wood
quilted by iron.
It wouldn’t be, as some would have it, purgatory:
no, there’s life hiving all around,
giving light
substance,
giving energy form.
If I could disembark once more,
swinging suitcase and feet
into ticketed procession,
it would be here
at the moment when the linear steps
into possibility,
or here
where time can still pretend to be
Victorian,
wrought and confident.
I’d come to this great reading room of trains,
where pigeons usher
unlooking travellers
and keep as constant in their chores
as angels;
I’d relish the texture
of buffeted air,
the lustre
of sudden braking on the line.
This isn’t a destination,
but instead a place
that we set foot in on our way,
where light is held and life
is almost tangible –
like surface tension at the point
of flowering
into splash –
like fields of breath unfolding in the lungs.
About this poem
Winner of the Wigtown Poetry Competition 2016 and first published in Southlight 20 (2016)
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Garry MacKenzie
Garry MacKenzie is a poet, creative writing tutor, writer and literature scholar, who teaches literature and creative writing in a variety of community and higher education settings.
