Poetic Pieces for the Mind and Spirit

This ancient byway, once well maintained, now overgrown its course barely remains.

Blocked storm drain, heavy rain has pitted and scoured the stone paved lane.

Weeds grown rank, collapsed earth bank, nigh on untraversable.

Brambles, nettles and docks, ocher-red west Country soil;

badgers excavated spoil in softening heaps with root, twig and branch.

Ancient sets, scrapes and runs, witnesses to a hundred thousand setting suns.

And within this detritus the first glimpse of greening bone;

protruding from beneath twisted root and rough-hewn stone.

I kneel in moist mold, I squint and peer, to try to get a view that’s clear

and so haltingly to scratch and pick then to excavate, through the native shales and slate.

Gently, softly; and then to see the herbivorous jaw-line jutting forward, free,

the large brown-stained teeth of Equine form.

Buried beneath this ancient thorn.

Ribs protruding out through moss, furze and fern; fractured fragments at every turn.

further on a femur exposed, pushed up and out of place by buttress serpentine,

Hidden midst the old man’s beard and honeysuckle withy-wine.

Who placed this noble beast interned discreet?

Was it of working stock or loyal steed?

The farm-boys nag or the Squires seat?

Buried here so the hounds may not have their feed?

With a boundary-bank built upon its back, planted thick with saplings firm;

Their grip holds true against Mother Moon’s straining fingers and the earthly legions of the worm.

Its bed, a mediaeval wall, whose rude clay bricks show a palm pressed in, clear and bold,

the whorls and lines of the creator’s prints their fortune long foretold.

And here, a broken pipe of clay, seemingly discarded, thrown away

Maybe he who laid out the equine corpse smoked a bowl at the close of play

And left, in respect, this simple grave-good to a trusted companion and friend

No longer a beast of burden, now a winged Pegasus, upward to the stars ascends.