A north wind blowing.
Its laboured, persistent breath,
Chasing out the dawn,
From the trusting, ancient wood.
I went on in half-light then,
With my precise companion.
The rain festooned the trees.
And every inch of land
Revealed itself to me.
Shedding its morning shroud.
Becoming more intimately known -
Surrendering to the charge.
Failing frames collapsed.
I turned my shoulder to the wheel.
The turf below was a pedal.
The earth below that, a gear.
Our footsteps in facsimile now,
To be remembered in the dirt.
On the broken, Roman path,
Cold metal pressed on flesh.
The loaded, aching springs,
Desperate to break free,
Remained tight and still.
In spite of everything.
The mist laid a town,
Three-hundred chimneys wide,
Out, like the last length
To ever fall from the loom,
And I stood over it, weeping.
Mourning its mechanical memory.
I trailed the river,
Down the slope of tumbling hills,
Through the drowning channels,
Carving careless in the earth.
That soft-rich water -
Seeping into life.
In the sodden valley
Headed by death’s door sheep.
I went on, to the foot
Of magnificent, ancient hill.
Entombed within it
Lay an unburdened secret.
I could have retreated,
Along the blind-brick causeway.
But I saw weak lamplight
In a high, dirty window.
Casting tortured shadows,
Across immaculate labour.
That reassuring returning dream,
Of old ways and old toil.
Of worn hands on worn metal.
Proving this place forever,
Seat and throne.
Castle and kingdom.