From the Fast Train

Across the firth cloudbanks rise
like mountains: a Caucasus range
transported, whipped into whiteness.

Sunlight blinks on the far shore,
the mild hills rise and fall, a roll
of paper scenery opening as we move.

In the salt-spumed distance the land
is misty, painted in the muted, formal
tones of those old holiday advertisements

that showed us summer heat: resinous pines,
mimosa and sharp agaves, their flower stems
leaning over improbable intensities of blue.

Hikers crossing shadowed fells, buckets
and spades scattered on spotless sands,
Arcadias that lay just beyond our reach.

At the estuary’s mouth the coastline ends.
Now it’s steep winter fields, earth steel-turned
for sowing, herring gulls and lichened walls.

Imogen Forster

Imogen Forster has been writing and publishing poems for the past seven years. She completed an MA in Writing Poetry at Newcastle University in 2017, and has a collection on the…