Whilst all around, our cares we tend,
a sheaf of corn catches glinting eye,
no yoke to bear, no toil and strife,
a golden prize is there to take,
dark skies above, a listless wind,
two dogs bark with tales to tell,
a distant train pulls iron and steel,
little belly starts to twitch, a yawn, a scratch,
a nose to sniff,
a thousand years is fuel indeed,
for spindle legs to run the course,
over twigs and stones, the gauntlet thrown,
a heavenly morsel to be found,
Through the window a furrowed brow,
sleep must mask the answers sought,
farmer pens his sums with haste,
whilst out in the field the conqueror spoils,
snug and warm, content and fed.

Someone's speaking in the kitchen,
though I know I'm on my own.
It's no ordinary sound of house.
We do not usually converse.
Its chatter is perverse,
so dialogue leads to friction,
when it nags me into cleaning,
while competing for attention
with the garden, growing, greening.
Like twins they twist my tolerance.

That speaker's spoiled my thinking,
so easy to displace,
but I'll stop his broadcast bleating
and tune to inner space.

Gold and silver battle *****
torn from swords saddles and crosses
lying beneath a farmer's field
tributes to kings and bellicose gods.

Fierce birds of prey snakes fish and bears
framed in filigree geometry
guarded warriors' savage souls.
No mercy in Mercia.

Archeologists anthropologists
historians librarians
curators and consertvators
collect confer and classify
while I just try to connect.

Gone are the glory days of jam butties
when marmalade was shredded gold
and spam pretended to be ham
and plum jam tested for a cold.

The wireless was our window on the world.
The Weekly News and Guardian
gave local news, views and reviews.
Street chatter made stories that much fatter.

That world now reappears to me.
But in it I take no part.
No good, no bad, no clumsy me,
no touch, no sound, no sacred heart-to-heart.

There's a drawing on my wall
a pen and ink impression
of the old transporter bridge
- a Meccano masterpiece.

It's my Tardis, my time machine,
portal to a vast interior
of vivid early images,
sounds of a rumbling grumbling bogie
pulling me back through time.

The clatter as our boarding gate swings shut,
an alert pause in the varnished cabin.
We listen for the next familiar step,
the creaking **** towards Runcorn Gap,
passing over Aethelfleda's Castle,
the mid-crossing windblown waltzing,
the bustling landing in the other county.

Musing at my bedroom window
proscenium to the street scene
parents in the back room snoring
St. Michael's sandstones frowning
at poor sally shambling shuffling
from secret shadow to moonshine
bottles clanking - guilty glancing
bulging stout bag - liquor dancing.

Standing at our poet's corner
spectators pilgrims commentators.
Ectoplasmis streams rise and flare
hot heaving lungs to cold dry air.
They stare - prepare explanations
poltergeist premeditations.

We were there on both sides of the Somme
seeking our stories of gory glory.
We were there teaching our young to **** and bomb
whipping up feelings of sadistic fury.

We were there purifying the race
destroying the foreigner - leaving no trace.
We were there fighting the just war
til all that was left was just war.

There's that feeling again,
a pressure to return.
It could never be the same,
next time no longer unique.
I'd need something new from it.
For now, I'm waking from
the author's dream.

Picture portraits in a small photo,
generations on a great hall's walls.
Prominent people of the past,
lives emptied out in a room now empty,
but still present in its patinated patterns.

Like pretend gods they covet their ill-gotten goods,
while the room fills with artisan phantoms,
championing their creative crafts,
charming the furnishings they fashioned.
Their lives survive only in their works,
some unattributed, unfamed but unshamed.