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Train to St. Andrews, Scotland

Smith, Dave

Not like Italian trains, raucous joy, crowds,

rows with students stealing seats, loud music

with tickets waved, conductors' sweaty grins, Huns,

Frogs, God knows what, and the wish for English words

the same old outsider ache when fine villas

loomed, anger's slow boil at boss's Comprendo?

Now lingo grunted mine, kelp-green fields ticked

with mists, gusts drove two red-haired girls at seas

on bikes bobbing a broken road. White house smoke

locked down villages, water's cold face like fjords

where kin once hid in trees. Then too dark to see.

I got off last, in wind. "Smith?" my contact wailed.

Whiskey, fire. Dawn-frost, the train's shuddering lyric.