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 The Waiting Room at Temple MeadsBy Graham Carter, 1984The waiting room at Temple Meads, Its kind request: 'No smoking please'. With walls of green and lights too bright, It sits and waits and waits all night. It never moves from Platform Nine, Just doesn't budge when comes the time. It doesn't catch the trains that go, Perhaps because its clock is slow. A man arrives but there's no train. He's missed the last one home again. The waiting room is not impressed. It welcomes not its stranded guest. The floor's a mess, the seats unclean. A sadder place he's never seen. But just for now they share a fate As both are forced to sit and wait. The man's content. He can't lose heart. At 6am he will depart. The waiting room is not so sure. Where is the train it's waiting for? I wrote the poem on June 15, 1984, at Temple Meads station, Bristol, completing it at precisely 1.52am. I was returning from Shobdon airfield near Hereford after completing a parachute jump, along with Simon McDonnell. I'm not sure if we realised we would miss the last train when we got as far as Bristol, but I think we eventually got a mail train home at about 3am. I have made a few very small changes to the original, but otherwise it remains the only poetry I've written since leaving school. Return to main Words page |