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.