Down in the Tube Station at Midlife

POETRY: Beyond the train doors, and into imagined lives

Here, underground, the sound
of the doors dragging heavily open
is the trigger: unspoken,
we rise from our seats,
our shuffling feet,
our luggage-bag scrape,
the welcoming gape
of the exit. Exeunt!
We escape.

Moments before,
in the black tunnel’s maw
over wheel-grinding screech,
behind black windows, breached
by electrical sparks that spit in the dark,
I springily sit.
I am inside the ark.
One by one,
two by two,
we leg-spread, we park
ourselves, swinging from hooks
with no eye-to-eye looks
in the rhythm of carriage,
knees, elbows, hands touching,
as closely as marriage,
our books and phones clutching,
chins tucked down to read,
to scroll
and scroll
and scroll through the feed,
we wordlessly feast
in the belly of the mechanical beast.

With my fingernails filed
by the harsh, wiry pile
of the moquette – the fabric
that cushions me in,
I’m lulled by the never-change
nature of trains,
their timeless refrain
of tunnel and station,
hypnotic sensation,
bewitched oscillation,
a mesmerisation
that pings a bright bell,
uncovers the spell
that has cloaked my myriad lives.

It sits on my shoulder,
sneaks dreams in my ear.
It lies to me, guilelessly
sidesteps the fear, tells me…

If I had not left this city.
If I had not followed that track.
If she weren’t pretty, so witty.
If I’d stayed, if I’d not looked back.
Now I’d be in a London orbit.
Now, a life here could be borrowed as mine.
Now I could take the Way Out path
at any station, any line.

There are dreams.
There is life.
Joined in darkness, they disunite.
We emerge,
bleached clean by the sunlight.

On the platform, the mob
is clumped, a blob,
their watches tick-tick
for the hint: a warm lick
of the breeze in their hair,
a compression of air,
amber sign: “Train Approaching”,
mice scuttling, broaching the
grimy rail’s surface, scattering
away from the headlong clattering
as the train’s nose bursts, battering
out from the inky-dark gullet:
a glass-metal skull, it
head-butts the world,
brakes to a halt –
this choked and gasping thunderbolt.

Its name is on its spiritless face,
a classical font, a note of grace:
I am Cockfosters. Kennington.
I am Bank. Brixton. Wimbledon.
And the mob, dear train, is yours.
Please stand back from the platform edge.
Please mind the gap.
Please stand clear of the doors.

With different choices
made decades before,
my ghost would exit here.
It would take the steps,
it would ride the stairs,
it would be borne, untroubled, clear
up, up, up into heavenly light,
to greet with a smile life’s endless flight.

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I find hugely romantic possibilities in the names of London Underground stations, even when the above-ground reality is grim. Sat on the tube and hitting almost any central London station, I’m often drawn into a brief imagination of My Other Life that could have taken place if I’d never met a significant other and still lived in the city. I don’t picture exactly what that life is (although the beauty of Baker Street station is the most alluring), and have no regrets, but there’s a version of me that gets out and goes home there, at almost every stop. I guess it’s a cliché – the whole Sliding Doors movie, road-less-travelled thing – prompted by my age and my life being centred in the deep countryside. I wonder, how common is this reflex?

I feel it vividly when I look at other passengers, because they so solidly represent the possibilities. It’s looking at their shoes rather than their faces. Such a mixture of classes, styles and mileage, and then seeing them exit the carriage to meet the million things that London might offer them… it’s a seductive drug. Not an upper or downer, more an agent of smoky melancholia – a mood I tend to wallow in.

I used some video I shot on the tube to illustrate this piece. Taken as the train moved from underground to overground, I was struck by the pulse of darkness that travelled down the carriage whenever the sunshine was blocked by passing a bridge. This is what inspired the “in the belly of the mechanical beast” line: the impression that I was inside the alimentary canal of some giant, metal worm. It put me in mind of a colourful phrase an Australian business associate used when a project had stalled: “Let’s get this piglet through the python.” In my use of the “belly… beast” wording, I say “inspired” but I’m certainly channeling echoes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Sallah tells Indy that his father is “in the belly of that steel beast”. I try hard to avoid writing clichés, but one can’t ignore every visit from the magpie.

(And on the subject of borrowed creativity, apologies to The Jam for messing with their song-title.)

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Video Loop: London Underground (near Ladbroke Grove), shot be me, cartoonised and looped in Final Cut Pro. Sorry if it induces nausea.

© 2026, Ian Winter. All rights reserved.
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