Five weeks, the beginning of the charmed time
at thirty-one days, there could be no repeats
each number gone not to recur.
One step nearer home.
Approaching the moment,
when the rising bell announced liberation.
Chaos and joy and a lurking shadow,
engulfed the press onto the old green bus
whose driver stared fixedly
forward, feigning deafness to cacophony.
Swinging through narrow lanes,
there seemed a momentum
that would steal the moment, given a chance.
Tickets handed out, by a house master
pretending his writ still ran
on the platform of a seaside station.
The blissful company of girls from the sister school
made that second class ticket a treasured possession.
Living a county away, the journey is brief,
the train gone, almost before the journey had begun.
The ticket from Teignmouth to Taunton
bringing not laughter, but loneliness
and indefinable shadow.