The Tunnel

Written 29/09/2017.

Photo credit Lee McGrath.

In the Tintern valley,
cut into the very side of those
rolling hills,
there is a dark hole.
Neatly bordered on its rounded edges
with weathered grey bricks,
the arch beckons,
as if begging one to walk within.

I stand on the half-remembered
ghost of a railway track,
my feet upon its broad plank,
and I stare.
The sun beams greyly down,
the birds sing, the leaves dance;
Behind me, across the river, is the old church,
boarded up like an abandoned house.

A breeze whistles,
echoing down like a distant moan,
or the memory of a train whistle.
If I walked under the arch,
took steps into the dark,
the sounds ringing,
the darkness all-encompassing…

What then, in the darkness?
What then?