Stones I Have Known

Stones I Have Known I know that stone - scoured smooth beneath the tread Of workers' feet too early out of bed. It sparkled finely to my childish sight, A treasure rare, lit up by morning light. Its drooping lip a quiet toddler's seat For gazing out at life along the street. At Junior school, the stones were black and grim, High walls around to keep us all within. The seashore stones provided wealth untold, On mudstone flats glint ammonites as gold. And Oh! that rock still there upon the beach, There was a time it soared quite out of reach. Much later then, the stones that edged the moors, Of grit and dark the wildness there endures, Drew up our youthful spirits high aloft To bleak lands, ancient trackways, peat bogs soft. In coastal city, built on trembling clays And windswept mudbanks, were my student days Swift spent beside the chain-worn granite blocks Which formed the landscape of th' ancient docks. The stones of London were a different breed, Erected there to grace a civic need. The Cenotaph, old Nelson and the rest, Erratics planted raw at our behest. In foreign parts, on beaches where we lazed, By lava sheets - rough frozen in such crazed And weird anthropomorphic shapes and planes. When trippers leave the vista pure remains. I know those stones on sparkling river bed. New children play arranging pebbles, red And white. It makes a pleasant place to sit - I stay awhile rememb'ring all of it. My final stone I do not know at all. I haven't seen it yet as I recall. * donkey stone --soft sandstone historically rubbed on the edge of a doorstep to create a pale line so that the edge is easier to see.