Walking down the Dandy Line
The wood was drawing close
There was no shadow where I stood
There walked a soldier’s ghost.
I often played here as a child
My spirit wild and free
And, now, my eyes no longer see
Are closed where life should be…
How strangely silent sits the night
That lull before the storm
A train goes rushing down the line
I, too, must soon be gone.
By the bridge, that spans the little beck
Where the moles are hung to dry
I pause, a moment, to reflect
Beneath the moonlit sky…
My senses heighten with each sound
A broken twig nearby
The susurrusing of the leaves above
The vizen’s anguished cry…
The wren I found upon the road
Two fingers stroked its breast
I laid within its makeshift nest
That it should find true rest.
The Bluebell Wood, Dean’s Farm, the church
All pass, as if a dream
Of what once was when I was young
Of what once might have been…
Where coal trains clangoured
down the line
An owlet’s rending cry…
The brickwork’s, now, abandoned sits
The kiln fires are dead
And all those parting words to friends
Past memories never red.
Down William’s Ghyll floodwaters rush
The rabbits make their run
All life, it seemed must be like this
Truth blinded by the sun…
At the Belted Will, the fires are lit
The regulars settled in
Another night of friends well met
What will the future bring?
The lights have dimmed the night takes hold
And, now, my spirits flown
There comes the day -another dawn
In all its glorious form…