Corfe Castle, Dec 21st

Looking down from the keep at the folding wall 

which gives way to light trails into the village, 

lamp light dew diffused on the tarmac that flows 

past the pub and the pub and the old tannery, 

the place with cream and and the other pub

with someone there who went to Bournemouth once.

The ringing bells of chatter by this rubble and 

and construction netting that 

looks like orange berries of the early morning 

as enjoyed by Allison 

and grass returned to the grounds 

that fried in boiling oil 

thrown down by royalists. 

Shooing of wending cars of the sticks 

passes through the hollow 

that opened up in me as I followed 

the folding walls and allowed 

my eyes to rest on maybe an 8 x 8 rectangle 

of Purbeck limestone,

blocks fashioned by impossibly old hands,

and the hollow says my serotonin spiked 

as we came upon Solsticeheads 

and their dogs and kids 

and some young couple 

with their tracksuits tucked into socks,

as we watched the buckets blaze, 

heating marshmallows instead of oil for your enemies

and the hollow says the inevitable pull of the old 

and of feasting season and 

just feasting on the markers of time

and what the farmers think they’ll pull in this year 

is unspeakably sad for 

what has been briefly pushed down by 

what we thought happened last week 

and what we think will happen the week next.

I certainly don’t care for what happens next, 

'cause we should honour struggle, 

not harp on in an unearned celebration of struggle, 

of honour and honouring in the present, 

as it is still happening,

and this is the true hollow, 

not my peaks and troughs up here in the keep, 

looking at the view; 

it was the same 20 years ago 

and 20 years before that, 

thinking we either stay up for the sunrise 

or we arise before it 

like curious folk of the present 

who have never worked the land.