Forested bluffs, these valley sides
Trent, Dove, Swarbourn, Blythe
Buttressed walls
Defending Needwood’s home
The forest plateau
Riven by scars, slashed deep –
The erosive ferocity
Of river, brook and stream
Yet lying low, discrete yet blunt
The rounded tops of Battlestead
On whose slopes, forgotten blood
Has seeped and soaked
Steep battlements cut
Deep ditches, high walls –
Wanderers repelled
All lost now under tilled earth
And swaddling pine;
This lookout, this belvedere
This sentinel point –
Eerily still, for now
It is the calm before the storm
Millennia have passed
Ice advanced, then receded
Meanders slipped back and forth
And churned and cut
Battlestead was born then –
Battlestead has watched since –
Yet now, a maelstrom of progress
Concrete, brick, glass and steel
The tree-skirt gone
The legacy lost
New towers are built
Her battle lost too –
And in her stead?
A brutal lesson.
Swáre-burn
10 miles it flows
From Forest source
To reed-bound mouth
Needwood’s life-blood;
Cloaked in a medieval patina
Of beech, of oak, of ash
Neck-clasped by the lustrous bricks
Of its arch-back bridges.
Yet there is no stealth here, no subterfuge
No lazy meanders
Its fair valley is straight-cut
Rare glimpses, treasured:
A distant spire; brooding Pines.
Swar bourn – swáre burn
Our Saxon fathers dubbed it – slow brook
In flow, perhaps
But not in flood.
The Long Man
Bandy-legged he strides
Through wind-weathered pastures
Tousled haired grasses,
The long fringe of Winter
Blow across his gaze
Sweeping, his clod footed feet
Brush them back
With irritated steps.
Boldy, he bog-hops
Over transient streams
Seasonally available
Like plump strawberries
Or barb beset pineapples;
There is a spring in the long man’s steps –
But Spring is not upon us, not yet
Just this low, long sun of Winter behind him
And those shadows – spreading, stretching
Elongating the everyday.
Brock
Digger, builder,
Badger, Brock,
The grey man of the fields
Scuttling gait, shoulders rolling
A shepherd lolloping after sheep;
Pausing, snout up, paw cocked
Like the keeper’s gun,
Trunnion-hinged,
Ready to snap-shut
And kill;
Brock waits
Maps the land through scent
Worms, or grubs, or nesting chicks;
In the far field, home
Root-roofed, earth walled; the sett
A safe haven – until the men come
With their shovels and picks
Holler and thrum
Dogs and gas –
Brock runs
Low now, head down, urgent
Through the long grass
Into the ditch
Beneath the hedge
Under the wheels.
Brock lies
Gutter-ways
As if asleep
Dreaming…
Digger, builder,
Badger, Brock.
Stoneyford Bridge
The long grass in Summer
Bends to the murmur of the wind
Only so far for a polite kiss
Daintily hiding the traces
Of seasons’ past.
Heads of feral wheat, far from home
Are bold now, fine-whiskered
Heads up like prairie dogs
Alert to danger;
Yet through it winds a path
Down to Stoneyford bridge
Just the trace of wandered boots
Like wisps of gasping breath
Captured on a frosty morning
Or the ripple marks as the tide flows.
Stoneyford bridge;
Two planks wide, nothing more;
Knurled knots standing proud
Lateral lines of yearly growth
Polished to a gloss
By Hunter Boots and walking shoes
Towelling trousers of kneeling kids
Yelping with delight
At the white-water chaos
Of Pooh-sticks below.
And beyond, the path whispers up
A rounded hill, encircled with barbs
Round like an iron age fort
Or the tree-shod bloodied slopes
Of some desperate bayonet stand;
But no fighting here:
Just the contours and trees
The echo of children playing
The lowing of a far-off cow
And the sigh of the path back
To Stoneyford bridge
The Lone Oak
I am here
I am a remnant
Just one
One, of a once great forest
One, of once upon a time
They say, ‘There is the oak’
Church doors; cruck frames; the wood of war
I am formidable
They say, ‘There is the oak’
Proud; strong; sentinel
The watcher, keeping guard
I am alone
I am a remnant
Just one
Today, a whisper of the past
Today, the inconvenience of man
Like my kith
One day soon I will fall
Felled to ease
The pass of the furrow
Straight lines in mother earth
Like my kin
I accept my fate
Until then
I am formidable
The watcher, keeping guard
Four ages of snow
First, the hush.
The soft cotton-wool drifting
Landing, feet together,
A parachutist behind the lines
At first, a hiss, just faint
On the edge of sound
Then blanket quiet
Hide and seek; under the duvet
Muffled whispers, low breathing
Nothing more
Next the crush.
That swaddling coat
Insulating, hiding, trapping
Winter’s hug; warmth below
Cold above; frigid cold
Like musical statues
Dead still, the White Witch’s curse
That east wind from the Steppe.
And cold sets the snow
Below soles: crunch, crack, creak
The slush; from a world
Of soft edges, smudged details
Comes the hard edge
Of melt; of grime, of grit
Of rubbed-in dirt
Smeared eskers of ice
Trampled by boot and paw, by tyre and tread.
I dream: the crushed ice
Scooped into my Iced Tea
On a far off beach
The gush of melt
Himalaya; Karakoram; Alps
Milk white and blue streams
Suspensions of dust rippling away
Down the edges of highways.
No bright painted bunting here
No mountain sanctuaries
Not here in this Mercian street
Where all joy of Saturnalia has passed
We wait for the Equinox
Foreglow
Winter morning, the uneven flags
Crisp with rime
Champ beneath my feet
Crinkle-edged blades of verge-grass,
Like knives before the whetstone
Shatter beneath my tread
My passing marked, as if through snow
Or low tide mud in the creek
I crest the humpback hill
Away, on the short horizon a foreglow
Uplights, like on some historic Pile
Illuminate the trees root-up
A dusky radiance, the early morning
Dust alight, sparking like shards
Of blackened wick flaring upon the match
The trees, like phantoms, or ghosts
Black forms with flickering sharp edges
I walk towards their back lit forms
And as the sun’s warm fingers
De-ices the fields
I become one with them
Bankfull
They’re talking about building again,
Building on the floodplains
But it’s plain to see
That the floodplains flood.
Take today, for Heaven’s sake,
Breathing in across the Bailey Bridge
The river bankfull below
The water benignly still
In touching distance, calling out
An illusion – look closely;
Look closely at the ruckus,
The swirls on the surface
The whirls of pent-up energy
The commotion of power
The tumult of excess
Sicked off the hills
Like hot soup rolling in the pan.
If there was a levee, it’s gone
The old ox-bow, gone too
The cycle path, lost to the sea;
Only the swans are joyful
In their new meres; soon gone too
Flooded from plain sight
Snapped up by the river’s thirst
Smothered below a duvet
Asphyxiated by branches, roots, silt,
It’s where the shopping trollies go to die
It’s where they turn up
When the flood subsides
Cock-eyed, strangely slanting, half-buried
Like the fuselage of a downed plane
Draped in periwigs of sodden shrubbery
Head sore after a big blow out.
Beautiful, true,
But deadly too.
Lost Mini
Sprinting across the shingle;
That’s what we did; sprinting
And flirting up a wake of pebbles
Grit too, like a rally car
Power sliding through an unpaved bend
In deepest Wales or Kielder or Galloway
Barely in control
The shingle gave way below our feet
Until we threw ourselves down
Next to the towels, spades and wind-breaks
The beach was the racetrack,
Banked bends, long straights
A Mulsanne and Eau Rouge in one,
With my Mini; unblinking eyes on the front
Throwing out death rays of light
Twin exhausts out back
Two fingers to the Planet
Spewing out the bile of internal combustion;
But it didn’t count on the assault course
Of being thrown from paw to paw
Or accelerated through the sound barrier
Or worse, being buried one foot down
By infants.
That’s where it ended.
I buried the car, like I buried the Scirocco
in later years; buried it deep
Not into the side of a truck
But in a pit; a grave of beach shingle.
I went to dig it up – but the car had vanished
Clawing, I dug a hole four foot wide
Roped my Dad in too; no avail.
Where is it now? That’s the recurring thought
I have whenever I walk on a shingle beach –
From Chesil to Slapton Ley
Where is my Mini?
In flights of fancy and whimsical thought
I imagine it now, somewhere near
The Mid Atlantic Ridge By-pass
Or whizzing through the Grand Banks
Pursued by Whales and Cod
More likely, it’s like that tank they found.
Fell off a boat it did
When practicing for Omaha and Juno
Came up years later; pock marked
Armoured by limpets
And camouflaged by kelp
morningmistermagpie.com 