Autumn Travails. (Revised).

Perhaps we are already in mourning.

The passengers all appear to be wearing black,
summer a diminished memory.

We huddle inside the commuter train,
jostled continuously from side to side
like parcels packed in speeding vans.

As has often been the case in my life
I appear to be the odd man out,
the pesky chap asking awkward questions,
burying the nail deep with one hammer strike.
Today I am dressed in yellow and green.
Black is far too formal for me.

October will begin tomorrow,
the golden month with serrated edges.
A knife in the belly of the gnarled year.
The snarl on the face of the future.
Even now the sun grows mellow, an overripe peach,
soon it will melt into the horizon,
dissolve beneath a bruise of clouds.

I stare sadly out of the window,
the city drenched in sudden rain.
Wild trees lean like dying widows
against decaying wooden fences.

The passengers all appear to be wearing black;
I find it painful to look at them.
I think they must all be undertakers
en route to a colleagues wake.

I touch your photograph in my pocket.
The cold white paper, cold as your kisses
that time you finally said "Goodnight".


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 28th. - 29th. 2013. - June 13th. - 14th. 2014.
July 22nd. 2015. - October 23rd. 2016.- May 9th. 2017.

This poem has evolved out of Autumn Travails / Winter Blues, a sketch of a poem written on a train in 2013. Everyone in the carriage appeared to be wearing black, apart from myself. I felt like a stranger in their midst, a foriegn visitor who was not quite accepted.