Hi Sally,
I like the song-like quality of this a lot, and the way the reader really is 
taken on a journey around various settings. The repetition and rhymes work 
well, IMO.
Haven't been to Cardiff for a few years, although I lived there 1996-98. Is 
the Noddy train the type of thing you find at some holiday resorts (I think 
I remember one at Cleethorpes when I was a kid), or one of those electric 
road trains you get in some cities, which I've also heard called Noddy 
trains?
Regards
Matt



>From: sally evans <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: The Noddy Train
>Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 05:09:16 +0100
>
>The Noddy train
>
>Stand on a silent day
>and let this morning be
>an estuary that drains
>to wide unnerving sands
>and look on Cardiff Bay
>from the Noddy train.
>
>Stand on activity.
>Climb Helvellyn,
>climb Snowdon, Suilven, Hoy.
>Climb them in mind again
>and look on Cardiff Bay
>from the Noddy train.
>
>Chug miles down Princess Street,
>return by Sauchiehall,
>vennel and boulevard,
>each esplanade and lane,
>then look on Cardiff Bay
>from the Noddy train.
>
>Out of the windows
>flapping fairground frames,
>take slatted seats
>to step off the world,
>a crazy ride through life
>in the Noddy train.
>
>A plaza or viale,
>the licence of this train
>tatty magic tardis
>on corrugated time,
>nearest suddely dearest
>in the Noddy train.
>
>It leads by chance to long
>views over history,
>roads where lives converged
>in toil and song,
>corrrectly ludicrous
>in the Noddy train.
>
>Monuments to the new,
>crumbled walls of the old,
>tarmac and broken stone
>under pedestrian floors,
>under wheels,
>under salmon ladders,
>
>A poem, or a fair
>imitation of one,
>cobbles and shanties, drums,
>seascapes, paintings
>that move with the scenery,
>gates that clang closed again.
>
>Tides roll relentlessly.
>My cousin, uncle, me,
>caught here by family
>in Cardiff's love and pain.
>Tears for the sudden music
>on the Noddy train.
>
>Sally Evans
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