Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Winners 2020 | Page 53

Hong Kong Young Writers Awards 2020
Poetry – Group 5
WINNER
The Midnight Train
St. Paul’s Convent School, Choi, Lok Yin – 16
Two headlights
ablaze
as the train pulls into the station.
Solitary, I board, stow my luggage,
settle down for the ride. Two hours. Behind me
the platform ebbs in reverse.
The shadows of skyscrapers too streak backwards
while the tethered flow of time races
parallel
outside the window.
Only the rumble of wheels and neon bursts
drown the drowsy silence
and the two cities before the sea
slumber
with open, lucent eyes.
I awake to horizons blackened by
silhouettes of figures blurred through hazy vision.
No stars in sight.
Just the hum of static as the train,
an impulse in itself,
speeds along the tracks spidering like neurones and synapses
through the expanse,
kindling limelight and embers of red and yellow and fluorescent white
with its passage until an ocean of distant firefly simulations flicker in reply
akin to the northern beacons of old.
Mere juvenile nebulae,
yet my view clears as the clusters of dust compress
to emit radiance, piercing the sky to reveal the outlines
of steel and concrete intertwined,
mirroring the pewter clouds lined with pristine silver.
Two headlights
dimming
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