Sprawled against that, we were looking across
at industrial fieldscapes, the heft and yaw
of mechanical harvesting. Up the end
of the road, the big house stood
like some kind of manifestation
beyond the estate agent’s brief.
It would all be gone too soon.
On the platform of the railway station,
I was folding a ticket down to town:
a world long gone in the footsteps
every morning of the fathers
making haste for the 7.05 to London.
The capital waited at the end of the line
like a threat. My children don’t believe
that moment as the trains came rushing in
and over the all-too-near horizon
the doors swinging back and our getting into place.
Elsewhere in the woodland, the branches
hung and dithered as we have always done.
