An English Life

An English Life It is midnight the Milk train pulls into darnall station No ordinary passengers here Steelworkers with their families Loaded with fishing tackle, sandwiches and maggots The Fossdyke in Lincolnshire, their destination The fare Half a crown for happiness The long walk in the dark, A stairway to heaven in my memory Dawn on the Foss and a cup of tea, Fever in the blood, the first eel of the day Our cane rods lovingly handed down from father to son. I remember, Pheasants looking for mates Shrieking their songs of love Swans begging for scraps Their majestic white necks, nodding, A greeting into their kingdom The mist off the water revealing families, being together, laughing, enjoying what was free. For tomorrow the grime returns. A conversation with a stranger then out of a bag, The rabbits, sometimes hare, sometimes pheasant. Onions and carrots, shortly follow The smell, forever linked with summer The scent of my childhood Summers were hotter then; At times I drank the Foss, for I was nature’s child Being clean was never a priority, Catching fish was, never killed always returned, Our Covenant with Nature. For it is the sport that we honour. And with age comes reflection, Poor I may have been, my education neglected But I have a Doctorate in nature, for I have seen the dawn Away from the factories, where the pheasant runs free And where the swan reins king, I was part of them. It was here I learned what family was, To share, my last drink of pop with my neighbour, A simple life, maybe, but what a life For I have seen what Constable painted Lived every word that Wordsworth wrote Understood the Fragrance of the Flowers And revelled in the poets dream. I loved every colour, every sound, every scent, And every fish I ever caught. Father and mother are gone now, Never complained about their Station in life, For they found paradise on the Foss. They left me the seeds to their heaven And the key to my happiness A key forged in a mans worth To open up my soul to the beauty That surrounds us all. Dawn on the Foss, was my church My soul was cleansed here And my heart was shaped here My memories kept safe here And the Foss fever still resides here I will die on some bank side, one day Rod in hand, and I will be content, So Tight lines my fellow Anglers.