Four Poems

West Cork Model Railway Village, Clonakilty

‘I cannot die
Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges.’
                                      ‘Innocence’, by Patrick Kavanagh

We step into an actual train: luggage racks, a brown leather bench
my daughter hides under. She laughs, then fades: you can’t travel back
past your birth in this poem. The space she was in becomes brogues –
then ankles – of a teaching inspector; beside hi-top white Reeboks,
black suede shoes with stacked crepe soles. Countryside starts unspooling
in a rhythm that syncopates, throws me. Night, and burnt diesel’s
coming in the gap that never quite closes. ‘Change at Ballybrophy,’
the inspector intones, cranking tickets out of a black box with an array
of buttons like a melodeon, a plot machine. Press red,
and the closeted priest cools his cheek against condensation and sighs.
Press yellow, the old lady catches my eye: ‘Mild night. Not too cold.
Are you going into the City? Ah, the village? Where did you say you were from?’
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