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On the West Highland Line – Linda Jackson

(Image: Alan Mitchell / A Glasgow – Fort William train climbs onto Rannoch Moor – Wikipedia)

A poem about the vulnerability of loving

First published Dec 2021 in Wanderlust Women, available from

www.seahorsepublications.com

On the West Highland Line

Linda Jackson

Lost, my love there standing,

Lochaber light and wildness

capturing his rush to know

everything. Let it go –

and be waiting for the train

and me arriving in evening pink.

The setting colours create warmth

as the train builds up speed,

cold mountains are past now.

Let it go.

Leaning, I see him drinking,

the Mallaig bar and shooting the breeze

with fisher folk and these islanders

he knows so well. Let them know,

and be waiting for the train.

Passing picket fence station,

Morar white sands thrown

in a hazy storm up and

over ancient boats moored.

Let them know.

Walking, I see him walking

down towards the harbour

where the moon is sending shadow,

he’s staring out to sea. Let it be me

and be thinking what we’ll do when

the train rattles past Glenfinnan,

swords will flash our history,

reframe the story,

raise the standard – and

let it be me.

Linda Jackson

Linda Jackson is the founding editor of Seahorse Publications Linda’s  own work includes The Siren Awakes (2020) and The Cabinet (poetry collection by Red Squirrel Press, 2021), she has been published in various anthologies, including New Writing Scotland. The second memoir, Siren: Wild in Me will be late this year as will her novel, The Mark of the Rose, she has recently produced a group of travel poems ‘Wanderlust Women’ ( This is a collection by four women poets: Linda Jackson, Donna Campbell, Tracy Patrick and Lesley Benzie writing about travel and dreams…where’.  An academic in a former life, her doctorate was a comparative study of Virginia Woolf and Friedrich Nietzsche. she has been a teacher and a writing tutor for forty years, a lifelong musician. 

This section: Love Poems, Stories and Tales from Glasgow writers, Valentines Day Glasgow