Ash Hall
This Train Will Stop
Five poems, October 2026.
Written over a couple of days, some at three in the morning, then read aloud into a phone on the train north. The dictation caught the platform announcements too, and they stayed in. They appear here in italics: a second voice, the world going on while the poems linger.
A morning walk in Merewether, a dream of being called back, a painted horse bought by four children, two trees by a lodge, and an offering in stone.
Shaped in conversation with Claude.
01
Toward the Shaded Place
Walking along merry
with a halcy effervescence,
light reflecting off every movement
this sound of water makes.
Pondering as they pass with their dogs,
given names of gods.
There’s an undercover space
where they’re waiting,
hats on,
covered in gloss.
Almost ten o’clock.
The light is starting to rise
as the heat falls.
Past Blue Door
toward the shaded place,
hoping
there might be
a space.
02
The Bell
I heard the sound before waking,
a small, insistent bell
calling in case I slept through.
The world had rung to say
it managed very well without me.
It knew the habits I wore,
asked the name I could not fetch
as I stepped out of the room,
building the day:
another bruise, a bitten tongue.
The world had not stood still.
It simply had gone on,
without a witness to return me,
to count each breath,
myself the only proof
of still living.
No bell. An angel spoke:
This train will stop at Katara.
Three faces, each one asking me
to come back,
my time was finished,
I should return.
The house went dark, the wire cut,
and nothing else.
Let it go unnamed,
the way the sea keeps its ghosts,
no introduction.
Someone without my name, travelling
in borrowed clothes,
a trick the dead have always played:
to speak and not be heard.
I saw my afterlife in this dream,
immortal in fragments.
I lent the world my prayer,
a spell,
and a spell requires no witness.
The house kept all its rooms but one,
a door open into the dark,
and without the old instinctive tool
my habit didn’t last.
This ghost wore no clothes.
I do not miss you the way a person misses rain.
I miss you as the body misses
a limb it built in vain.
He took everything but left the door,
as heaven keeps the age it takes,
or does it let you grow?
I heard the sound before I woke,
a small insistent bell.
It knew habits I did not know I wore,
spoke my name in black and white,
words I could not fetch.
A bruise, a bitten tongue.
The world had not stood still.
And as heaven keeps the age it takes,
an angel came before my face
and spoke.
03
The Painted Horse
Bought at DJs
over forty years ago.
Four children, none yet ten,
each given a handful of coins,
decided to pool them together
and buy something to love.
They chose a marionette,
a horse with flowers on its flanks,
a saddle the shape of a harp,
green Moroccan leather.
The next stop is Cardiff.
Four children
formed a treaty that day.
Buses to John Hunter Hospital.
A horse with eyes that knew
every passing shadow and face.
The children grew into adults,
each with their own life.
The marionette strings grew old,
and the paint grew old,
but the paint never faded.
Let it go.
So they sold the horse for sixty dollars,
and now it lives with me.
04
Between Two Paths
She faces the sun, breast hard to the light,
legs crossed, a smiling face,
tall, with Amazonian thighs and a thin torso,
her green-leafed hair flying in the wind
as she looks down at the earth
with dark slit eyes.
And he stands, arms reaching to either side,
feet centred deep in the ground,
dancing in a mohair headdress of green,
saluting the sky.
This train will stop at Cockle Creek.
The sky child, with a hundred years to follow,
looks at the two paths
and wonders which to take:
left, open and sunlit,
right, where the forest is dark.
Between them a footbridge crosses to both.
Behind his back the stumps make love,
covered in moss,
her thighs dug into the leafy ground
as she looks up to the light.
Her dark head sips eons.
The next stop is Cockle Creek.
Uneven-breasted, her branches turn toward the oakwood.
Green leaves wasp through the wind.
The lady of bark rests her legs deep in the ground
against his mossy spine,
making love to his wooden arms.
Still behind her he stands,
arms reaching to either side,
feet deep in the earth,
watching her headdress move in the breeze,
saluting the sky child
caught between two paths.
05
Offerings in Negative Space
Listening to the quiet
sing into a turquoise mountain:
traces of burnt offerings
mortared into ash,
sunken lines germinating on an orb.
The mountain is stone,
turquoise points in its burnt offerings,
and the sunken, imminent lines breathe
as they listen to the quiet sing
in black ink turning red.
Imprints of a fossil,
the dust of sun clouds,
an ankh covered in fossil imprints.
Rose of Jericho, mimosa,
shame plant set in ivory.
He looks into the ivory water,
root derivations,
the ivory curls.
Offerings in negative space.
New life ponders
as it tendrils
through a labyrinth of dead air.