25 years on East Midlands Trains
The bridge at Market Harborough fields regular hits
of lorries and delays, past where, each January,
we watch new lambs shivering and scrambling.
The Elite Upholstery Co. has gone, made over
to a Co-op sealing off the terrace view.
Red kites have worked up-country,
hunting this year’s ploughing by the Triangular Lodge.
Kettering creeps its new estates into the scrapyards;
in Plumbco colours are out of fashion
and free-standing baths an aspiration.
On a good day there are the same number of heron,
more or less; on a bad day we stop at Luton.
How many generations of swans
have paddled these muddied rivers? This window seat
writes down gasometers translated into mortgages
with views of Eurostar (removed from Waterloo)
and all the promise in wet platforms, luggage, glass.
D A Prince
