Odyssey

Tyldesley Station
Early morning train
Brian coming home from Ireland
Glad to see his home place
Dear old Tyldesley
Glad to be in ‘Bongs’
Once again

Porter on the platform
By a flowerbed
Brian reports
As he was duly told
His ticket is invalid
What’s to happen?
Does he have to pay?
To offer gold

Staying overlong
With his cousins
His ticket unbeknownst
Runs out of time
The collector
On the train down to Dublin
Calls him out
The reason and the rhyme

Brian has to pay
An extra surcharge
All the money he has left
Is gone
How heartless that collector
To a schoolboy
At the boat will they let him on?

Instructed to report
Dun Laoghaire Harbour
His cousins now safely all aboard
Brian goes searching
Down a platform
Where’s the man?
The man that must be told

Finally allowed
The ship to access
A sigh of huge relief enters his soul
At Tyldesley
I have to report my failing
My heart is sore
It feels as black as coal

The porter smiles
On hearing this long story
Good to be home
He tells my joyous heart
I think your mum will be waiting
With your breakfast
On you go, lad
Make a morning start

Not even Odysseus
In his journeys
From ancient Troy
Returning o’er the sea
Endured the torment
I endured that summer
When I came home
To Bongs and family

The agony of worry
For a youngster
The heartless
Efficiency I found
That caused my heart to tremble
At the notion
I might never reach my home
My native ground

The collector
Not a bad man just officious
Unable to give leeway to a child
The porter
Oh what a lovely welcome
That quiet morning
On that Tyldesley side

Brian Fahy
20 May 2021

* ‘Bongs’ is a corruption of the word ‘Banks’. Tyldesley is built on a bank of ground that falls away overlooking the south Lancashire and Cheshire plain.