Last Train

Sue Lockwood

A train runs through my childhood

night-time, always winter,

like an illustration in a story book

or chalk-drawn on a blackboard,

everything equal in perspective:

the frosted owl, the stark tree,

white rails ending abruptly.

On cold nights I still hear

the perfect chord of that train’s horn

as the last of my childhood

nears the station, a sound not unlike

a mythic bird’s clutch of notes.

SUE LOCKWOOD’s poems have appeared in Meanjin, Island, Antipodes, The Haibun Journal (Ire.) and in anthologies. She was short-listed for the Gwen Harwood Prize (2024), and Bridport Prize (2023). Her debut collection, The Flowering Dark, was published by 5 Islands Press in 2024. Sue lives on a green wedge of Melbourne on land of the Wurundjeri-willam people.