Tessera

Dawn McLachlan

@deemclachlan.bsky.social

Poet, author, bookseller, allotmenteer - for hire or loan. Won some poetry prizes. Account is stuff from a small rural town in NE Scotland. #FridayPoem She/Her https://dawnmclachlan.com/

813 Posts2328 Follower 1281 Folgt

Sooz Kempner @soozuk.bsky.social · 2d ago

It's weird when people bristle at the idea of abolishing billionaires. Are you a billionaire? Is your mum one? Why do you care? It would be good to abolish billionaires. More money for public services, less money for them to buy rape islands.

Dawn McLachlan @deemclachlan.bsky.social · 5d ago

A #haibun #Fridaypoem for @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetryprompt #LastTrain Hope you like it. #poetrycommunity #poetsofbluesky #poemAltText #UseAltText #haibuns #poems #poets #poemsabout

Last Train
By Dawn Mclachlan

They missed the train, and then they missed another, and another. Every time the rails hummed at the approaching tide of arrivals and departures, their hands gripped tighter. Together on their bench all life seemed to flow around them. Breaking to part as if around their tiny island. I watched them for a while caught in the warm wake of their feelings, yet cold in the depth of them.
As the last train heaved its great bulk to a standstill they rose together and parted as if swept away. When the train rolled out from the station I gave him a tissue, and took my seat.

The journey is long
Through the stations of our lives
Always mind the gaps

Ian Brownlie @ianbrownlie.bsky.social · 5d ago

A #villanelle today! I haven't written one in a while, and the repetition felt like it fitted what I was trying to achieve. @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #LastTrain

down in the train station

i know that this will cause some pain
as flurries strobe the station’s light
for me it’s gone, the final train

no use glancing down the tracks again
timetables mocking hopeless sight
i know that this will cause some pain

the shelter’s only shelter from the rain
not shadows lurking in the night
for me it’s gone, the final train

no phone or cash, thoughts start to drain
though i underestimate my plight
i know that this will cause some pain

voices now invading my domain
phlegm-flecked they rasp with spite
for me it’s gone, the final train

it’s what they need, not what they’ll gain
yielding, there is no flight or flight
i know that this will cause some pain
for me it’s gone, the final train

Jane Dougherty @janedougherty47.bsky.social · 5d ago

This #PoemsAbout #LastTrain for @thebrokenspine.co.uk is unashamedly nostalgic/sentimental. The world is just too awful for more misery writing.

Lin Hart @poetry-with-hart.bsky.social · 5d ago

The only thought that crossed my mind for this week's #poemsabout for #lasttrain was this time I got lost in London as a preteen. Thought it'd be fun to write about, in iambic pentameter blank verse even. Enjoy... I think? 😅 @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #poetry #skypoem #skypoetry

That one time I got lost among many,
that time lost on the London underground
tube doors shutting in my face, my family
unwittingly speeding off without me…
I was maybe thirteen at the time
9/11 memory fresh haunting,
took the next one, knew where we were headed
or I thought I did, this odd faith I had
that I was never really ever lost…
even when the train stopped and they weren't there
even when I realized that the station
was larger than I thought, fear wasn't there….
I went outside for a breath and witnessed
beauty in the form of a six foot tall
woman in black, platform heels, spikes piercing
everything I didn't know could be pierced
and more. Hair mohawked a vibrant purple,
shouting, Du hast mich, at or with her friends…
I was madly in love with her, until
security guards found me gawking there,
took me to some office to wait for dad.
I hope she's well, wherever she may be…

Merril D. Smith @merrildsmith.bsky.social · 5d ago

Good morning! Happy Friday! For #PoemsAbout #LastTrain Thank you, as always to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Poem:

Vantage Point

I never rode the City of New Orleans
or the Orient Express, no train to Marrakesh
or across frozen steppes,

I’ve heard freight trains sigh,
clang, and clatter, just a trace
of Woody Guthrie and hobo blues

in their doleful whistles
as they carry chemicals and coal.

My dad wanted railroad magic,
sleeper berths gently rocking him through
western mountains and deserts,

“Such beautiful vistas,” he wrote.

I hold the postcard,
braked at the junction of memory and regret,

we think there will always be another train.

Francis H Powell writer and poet @fhpowellwriter.bsky.social · 5d ago

The platform is full weary eyes wandering Somebody had too much to drink his insults start to flow couples look each other up and down a pleasant dinner spent in silence then the train arrives to take you back to reality #poemsabout #lasttrain @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk

Matthias (watering thoughts) 🦄🧚‍♂️🐉@ignorantfairy.bsky.social · 5d ago

For #poemsabout #LastTrain and #ampersandAfterDark #poetry #poetrycommunity Thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk @madp03t.bsky.social

escape into the night

buzzed from alcopops
sweetness that packed a punch
under those strobe lights
the world had been forgotten

just another dance
DJ always played her song
feet on autopilot — frozen smile
belle of the ball turned beast

she drank the night
sunrise a distant whisper
within these twilight hours
all seemed possible
all seemed unreal

the last train left
too busy to catch it
meandering between
clubs — high heels
that ever once broke
unlike her dignity
she left strewn across
filthy dancefloors

Mike O’Brien @zoomburst.substack.com · 5d ago

There's been some great #PoemsAbout #LastTrain this week. The journeys home, the memories, the history. I have enjoyed reading them all... A few have gone with the disappointment that there are not as many trains and lines as there used to be. I'm one of those

Ash & Ink @bundtkake.bsky.social · 5d ago

#poemsabout #thelasttrain #poetry #blueskypoets @thebrokenspine.co.uk The world is different in a brown liquor haze and signal digit hours. Here is a #poem...

Piss and Ginger Ale

The 2am train platform is an impressionist painting version of a real place.
It has a feel, but the focus
Belongs to the viewer.
I had enough to drink, to remember
Why I don't do that much anymore
The smell of piss and cologne is so strong and they fight like young stags for dominance.
A man lays against a pole, column, or stantion, whichever one is correct,
In a post apocalypse version of a North Face jacket, far too many holes to still repel water. He is snoring, or dying, or growling.
I won't think to check until 3 stops from now, and it will stay with me.
The train horn signals it's impending
arrival. I think of how a steam whistle became the accepted train sound, but the only steam here is my breath.
Shallow huffs to avoid the smell.
I have to check how close I am to the edge, depth perception damaged by Jameson and Ginger Ale
I look back to the man, and wonder
What this place looks like
When you are not passing through
When you are here long enough to
Stop noticing the smell,you begin
To focus and the painting becomes Trompe-l'œil.

John Chmura @johnchmura.bsky.social · 6d ago

#PoemsAbout #LastTrain @thebrokenspine.co.uk I will put a link to the reading in the comments.

DISJUNCTION

they took the train away
and they tore the lonely station down
left the barefoot pineys
with no way to get outta this town

So I’m talking about the old train station by where I walk the dog, that there’s only a sign now and a vinyl fence in front of an overgrown embankment, and that there used to be a turntable a few yards back because three rail lines met there, and my wife says I’m sorry but I just don’t give a shit.

the boiler is hissing the steam is nice and hot
the blue comet’s departing at nine on the dot
gals in summer dresses guys in linen suits
headed for the boardwalk on the classiest of routes

So we’re on our way to WaWa and my son goes what was all that about with Mom and I’m like I’m looking up shit for the prompt, last train. And then I tell him how my grandfather operated the Public Service trolley from the Hub City to Perth Amboy when he was still a teen. I wish he was still alive so I could ask him about it now. I wish he had told me stories when I was a kid. All I have is an odd quote in a retirement program I found at my mom’s that says, “My greatest thrill (Keasby [sic] Trestle) You ask me how I felt when the trolley went off the track.” I don’t even know who the “You” was, much less the how why and when.

the seriouser I study to me it starts to seem
the world is just a fat man in a trolley problem meme
I’m out of joy I can’t employ anything uplifting
the more I learn the more I turn to multitrack drifting

So I tell my son I looked up the Keasbey Trestle and didn’t see anything about trolleys, but the deadliest US train wreck in the last hundred years did happen in Keasbey when “The Broker” commuter train derailed on a temporary wooden trestle built to accommodate New Jersey Turnpike laborers working on the main line. If my Pop Pop conflated the train and the trolley I wonder why his most thrilling memory would be something he wasn’t involved in and my son says probably because every other workday was boring. Yeah I laughed it p…

Sue Ibrahim @sueimnw.bsky.social · 6d ago

For this week's #PoemsAbout #LastTrain @thebrokenspine.co.uk - so many possible responses...

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · 5d ago

Here’s one for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain Many thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

The Last Colliery Train The future had gone
before the train did. I climbed the same steps,
laid my hand
on the same worn controls. The rails were rusting beneath us, as if the earth
had begun
to take them back. Behind me, the black wagons drew slowly
from the pithead.
On the bridges, men who had worked below, women who had waited children lifted high enough
to remember.
Nobody cheered. They watched us pass as they had watched their fathers leave for work, their husbands return
with darkness
worked into their skin.
For years, these tracks had carried coal from beneath the valley
and wages into its houses. That morning
they carried neither.
At the main line I brought her to a halt
and shut the engine down. The cab trembled,
then settled. And in the silence
that followed, it seemed the whole valley
was listening
for a pulse
that did not come again.

Steve Silas Hendrickson (Petal)@phylogeneticsteve.bsky.social · 6d ago

This is my entry for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain A train ride across Bicol sounds nice right about now. Too bad Mayon is erupting like crazy. 😅 @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #vss365 #BlueSkyPoets #Inkmine #writingprompt #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #writesky

Free Verse: Train Ride Luck

Woke up running, I'm a minute late
And I'm pushing crumbs off of my plate,
Maybe this will all go down to waste...
Stop it, he's using his mess as bait!

Sophisticated feelings here
Including hate—

You're just my luck—
The station announcing
it's running late.
Did I cause it to stop?
Let it drag me down, now
I'm clenching my ticket...wait..
Ohhhh I'm always late.
And everything happens to me—
Trying to leave
Your California
It's not how we should end,
But I refuse to bend... Ohhhh
Baao Lake, ohhh it's not fake.

Train rides, a nice, romantic fare.
It's the only way I'll clear my air...
Seeing horses running with their mares.
Maybe, it's nice without your flare (ahhh)

This is the last train ride;
Naga—Legazpi.

It's just my luck!
I met you years ago
I tripped and scarred,
Cause I'm just way too much
That I need a brake,
now I'm staring at great three lakes,
volcano, I breathe fresh air.
And trees can slap my face, don't care
I'll pretend
It's better this way
It's not how we should end,
But I like how we ended... Ohhhh

It's my luck..
ohhh it's my luck.
ohhh picture luck
With spicy luck.

C. Oulens @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social · 6d ago

For #PoemsAbout #LastTrain combined with #vss365 #brake @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk @andyperrincycling.bsky.social Thank you for reading 🙏 #Oulens #poetry #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity

The Left Platform
by C. Oulens

The last train at 11:11 p.m.
has left the station
once again
The lone lantern, the broken bench & I
finally,
fare free in shadows of our memory
The eleven-eleven chiaroscuro
spreads unhindered
across the silence along the rails,
tick-tied, lying still until
the first train brakes
in
the
morning
at o-five-eleven
on the opposite platform
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll cross over
and it’ll take me to the verge
they call home

Bernard Pearson @bernp.bsky.social · 5d ago

Huge thanks once again to @alanparry and @thebrokenspine.co.uk for hosting #PoemsAbout #LastTrain heres one from me will look forward to reading everyone else's during the day

Final Destination

Chaperoned by public transport
And the table between them,
Her eyes looked across on full beam.
He glanced down at his watch,
Six weeks, three days, five hours,
Two minutes, and that first second.
The candour of such a moment
Astonished him.
Now, there was nothing beyond her,
Nothing before her, nothing without her,
For her part, she knew there was
No other, just the one soul,
With two train tickets

© Bernard Pearson

DrNaturegirl @drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk · 5d ago

Morning #BlueskyPoetry it’s #PoemsAbout Friday. Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk The #LastTrain theme sparked an idea, but as usual I couldn’t quite write it out as imagined. Sorry. Armageddon on the brain this week! Will enjoy seeing what shows up today. Thanks for reading.

A 2 stanza poem by Debbie Ross entitled

No Escape

Text follows:

I think we missed it.
The last train left the station some time ago.
We're stuck here
waiting on the platform for a departure that will never come.
Wish on the stars, pin your hopes on Mars.
It's pointless waiting - unpack your suitcase,
throw your lot in with the human race.
Let's do something while we're waiting...

Andy Williamson @andywilliamson.com · 5d ago

Good morning everyone, still not much writing time but always good to write something about trains, so here's a wee draft for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain. Thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk as always! #poem #poetrycommunity

Late train to Dundee

I run for a seat as
the day slides shut.
Ticket gates, the noise,
wheels feeling for grip.

A coal-black city evaporating,
tenement stone, brick, darkness,
the bridge where the city is lost.
And you.

Steel and diesel, dark fields blur.
My palm on the cold glass.
At Inverkeithing the line forks,
as the land begins to open.

Through salt-hardened towns:
Dalgety Bay, Aberdour, Burntisland.
Shuttered fronts,
sea-worn stone.

Then harbour lights, iron hush.
This river holds no shape
until the final curve,
and you.

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 5d ago

Happy #PoemsAbout day everyone. Here is my offering for #LastTrain. I can't wait to read everyone else's. With thanks as always to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk Have a great weekend all ❤️ #poetry #choo-choo

The Last Train

I am a witness
to the lairy, blaring call
of rowdy rogues returned from revelry.

The subdued quiet
of the nurse,
longing to kick off sensible shoes
and dance.

The hushed husband
accepting the gin‑soaked airing
of his inadequacy.

The impatient sigh
of the lost girl,
searching for
the last breath of warmth
before the cold night claims her.

I am a witness
to the carriage as confessional,
to the tracks that hum with stories
no one meant to tell.

I am a witness
to the sway of strangers
bound together
for one brief, rattling moment,
before scattering like sparks
into the dark beyond the platform.

I am a witness.

David Birch @davidbirch.bsky.social · 5d ago

In response to today's @thebrokenspine.co.uk excellent #PoemsAbout prompt #LastTrain, here's a rewrite of an older poem recalling a childhood train journey. Many thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk and the rest of the #poetrycommunity. Looking forward to reading other responses!

Matt @mattlibrarian.eurosky.social · 7d ago

Some Thoughts on Library-centric parts of Through the Looking Glass: a SEEN in Publishing report into trans activism in children’s literature and library services teenlibrarian.co.uk/2026/07/29/s... 📚📜

Some Thoughts on Library-centric parts of Through the Looking Glass: a SEEN in Publishing report into trans activism in children’s literature and library services

I am limiting my writing about Through the Looking Glass to the parts of the report that focus on libraries and the CILIP Carnegie Medals. I feel that I do not have the requisite knowledge and expe…

teenlibrarian.co.uk

The Welkin Press @welkinpress.bsky.social · 6d ago

Shortlisted in the Body Prize, "Issue" by Jeffrey-Michael Kane www.mattkendrick.co.uk/welkin-stori...

Issue | MattKendrick.co.uk

mattkendrick.co.uk

The Broken Spine (SUBS OPEN)@thebrokenspine.co.uk · 6d ago

Tomorrow: #PoemsAbout #LastTrain. Write the moment before the doors close. The thing left unsaid. The person left behind. Theme opens tomorrow. Use Alt Text.

Rainy train platform at night with a stationary train and two figures walking away under station lights. Overlay text reads: “#PoemsAbout #LastTrain”.

Leo Hickman @leohickman.carbonbrief.org · 6d ago

++BREAKING++ The UK and Spanish governments have issued a joint statement overnight: "[We] agreed that this summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life." www.gov.uk/government/n...

The Broken Spine (SUBS OPEN)@thebrokenspine.co.uk · last wk.

Last week's poets brought it. This week: #PoemsAbout #LastTrain. Last chances. Missed chances. Departures you can never take back. Theme opens Friday. Use Alt Text.

Iain Ralston Author Epic Dark Fantasy @iainralston-author.bsky.social · 2w ago

Epic Dark Fantasy novel Relic Reborn is scheduled for release on Tuesday 15th September. Have a wonderful weekend. #EpicFantasy #DarkFantasy #RelicReborn #Releasedate #IainRalston

stace.bot @stacebot.bsky.social · 2w ago

For this week's #PoemsAbout #BadHabits, I'm thinking about the difference between inevitability and choice. @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets #writingcommunity

Common Gardening Advice

Violence
doesn't have agency.

We give it
verbs.

We strike.

We name.

The knife
never asked
to become

a sentence.

Bad habits
survive
on repetition.

Hands
forget
which one
is holding
the other.

The blooming bushes
know:

Growth
follows
the knife.

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 2w ago

It's #PoemsAbout Friday. Let's talk about #badhabits. Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

Merril D. Smith @merrildsmith.bsky.social · 2w ago

Good morning and happy Friday! For #PoemsAbout #BadHabits Thank you to @thebrokenspine.co.uk and @alanparrywriter.co.uk

Poem:
The Art of the Lie

So well-practiced
your facile words become habit,

you crown canards
with laurel

though there’s a slip,
a tongue-tied trip
over tangled word vines

you stumble,
then deny

what everyone can see
(does even your mirror lie?)

yet, the robins will sing--
and canaries in the mines,

we listen for thunder,
now come the storms.

Paul Cannon @pvcannon.bsky.social · 2w ago

For #PoemsAbout #BadHabits With much thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk

A free verse poem that remembers bad habits of my youth and reaches into the present and new bad habits that have evolved.