Where Youth Did Tread
(An Addingham poem)
‘There! Where every curve
injects another memory.’
Analytic beauty that
nestled in verdant valley
allows the mind to review,
where archaic dry-stone walls
enhance the ancestral ghosts,
impeccable trees, nature’s
guardian to one’s heady days,
inscribed when lovers called.
Now historic brows lost
within the village face,
expressive meadows
from a bygone age did
grace now lay in waste,
every thistle upon
throstle nest cut down
and stone barns redundant.
For cement and brick
replace the gathering blooms,
fertile soil lay under macadam
and house numbers
supersede the hawthorn hedge,
and old ‘Bram’ on horse and cart
daily down moor lane
long gone and dead.
Oh. Them old manifestations
embedded, the labour
of many a village son,
where leaf and wood
do part but once a year,
after seasons of regrowth
give way to winter’s ascetic sun
that rolls across Rombald’s moor.
‘Oh. Yes, the sun, one thing
that man has not yet changed.’
© Harry J Horsman 2021
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