for Reggie Smith

Eleven years back. After the boat sank
England astern, a toy train teetering
over empty country spilt all over
with incandescent gorse; lone white stone farms
tamped down green billows. Their Prospectus had
a map: the British Isles projected on
some principle opposed to those Mercator
jobs in old school atlases, showing all
the rest wrapped round the Province in the centre
(well, I'd learn that that's the way they think here),
and short thick lines denoting ready access
to London, Leeds, etcetera. That train
tilting over flickering yellow, meadows
and streams, seemed over my whole world's edge then.

In months one got stuck into what they're stuck in.
...