The steam trains have been busy tooting this week and it is always a joy to hear them from our house, so I thought a suitable poem was in order.

 

The Railway Children

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting

We were eye-level with the white cups

Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.

 

Like lovely freehand they curved for miles

East and miles west beyond us, sagging

Under their burden of swallows.

 

We were small and thought we knew nothing

Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires

In the shiny pouches of raindrops.

 

Each one seeded full with the light

Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves

So infinesimally scaled

 

We could stream through the eye of a needle.

 

Seamus Heaney

 

Lady Book Dragon.