A Past Country

We all felt we were immortal Nothing would ever change As a child of the village with Acres of fields to range. All these years later So much has gone Meadows under concrete As time has moved on. Gardens occupy those Once informal footways So some old shortcuts Are closed these days. Most streets are signed And have streetlights Some of the magic gone From dark winter nights. The imagined invisibilty Of roaming girls and boys But always given away by The chatter and the noise. My old home and Forge Cottage Modernised, knocked into one, The forge yard now under grass The farm machinery long gone. As a listed building the Forge, Restored, still sadly stands In a no longer working village Now mainly commuter land. The shops now long closed To me there’s sadness in the air I feel no empathy or connection With the folk now living there. Those good old days Were at times quite bad, Nostalgia has Its drawbacks But now I feel alone and sad. Occasionally I visit graves But very quickly move on I belong only to its past My village now being gone.