The other fatal rail incident

Train collision kills cricketer

Evening Standard, 18 June 2012

My train was delayed this morning

and so overcrowded — people all but hanging

from the doors — that the first class carriage

was opened up to all, and it seemed to me

that every person from every town

from Holyhead to Chester had climbed aboard

that train, except for one who was smeared

all along the track just outside Prestatyn.

Later on the six o’clock news I heard

that a famous cricketer had died under a train,

and although his name meant nothing to me

I turned my attention, which had been elsewhere,

ready to mop up the gory facts for earnest retelling,

and was miffed that it wasn’t him outside Prestatyn.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet