The 80s Green View

The 80s Green View The natural landscape was vast and green I could see it from the front windows of our house And further still to the distant hills and counties This area was where I lived and still do Between waking and dreams, reality and illusion Art and poetry collide as does something else Fragments of my past now brought to the fore For me to re-experience and deal with Walking in the view below and in front of our house As a teenager hiking and exploring the scenery Seeing the men fly remote control aeroplanes Putting stones on the train tracks And thunk thunk thunk! The stones are now dust Finding a toy aeroplane in the mud in the field This was the early 80s and I was 11 or 12 I had new lands to explore and adventure! I still do this last bit today but it’s different Seen with adult eyes and no innocence Shall I go left or right, or forwards? I’ve surveyed the area with my binoculars And my eyes have danced upon the earth This land I’ve flown over almost to the crash site That came later when the R22 chopper fell And a person tried to to jump clear This was a decade before and I looked for others When I thought Dingle farm was here Where one of several Heyford bombers crashed But the farm was far and not around here Or so a stranger told me as I looked My mum would be mad I asked a stranger They will molest and kidnap and murder you! Like I murdered the bird’s eggs in the nest I found lying next to a small river with no mother Not camouflaged enough for I killed them And don’t know why? I was young and out exploring the view It stretched from Moorside to Sholver Via Derker, Royton and Salmon Fields Was all enclosed by roads and train tracks And houses and factories and more I imagined a trapped army hiding there And I fired all types of weapons at them How my mind runs riot...