Stations of the River Fog

At dawn the disused railway drinks rain, platform numbers blurring under moss, a heron waits where ticket lines once bent, its throat a pale wick in the fog.

Commuter clocks still hang, blind-faced, but swallows sew the rafters with quick black thread. Every departure board has learned one word: weather. Wind turns the loudspeaker into a seashell.

I walk the trackbed ankle-deep in fennel, steel gone warm with rust and pollen. From the tunnel mouth, light arrives in slow handfuls, as if morning were unloading fruit.

No train comes, and still the place keeps timing me: breath, footfall, the click of seedpods. By noon the station is all green music, a country learning to pronounce itself again.