Sole passenger on an early morning tram
I’m half asleep when the driver brakes,
dashes past me, dives into a copse of trees,
gone for so long I almost get out to walk.
Then he’s back, his face alight.
I saw the wren! Explaining
how he feeds her when he can
and her restless, secretive waiting.
We talk of things we love until the station.

I tell him of the Budapest to Moscow train
brought to a halt in the middle of nowhere,
everyone leaning out expecting calamity
but not the engine driver, an old man
kneeling to gather armfuls of wild lilies,
wild orchids. He carried them back
as you would a newborn, top-heavy, gangly,
supporting the frail stems in his big, shovel hands.
These are small things, but I pass them on 

because today is bloody, inexplicable
and this is my act, to write,
to feel the light against my back.

Pippa Little lives near Newcastle-upon-Tyne where she teaches a course in writing poetry for the Faber Academy and is working on her fourth full collection. This poem is from her collection Twist (Little Arc Publications, 2017).