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101 - Red Lane |
Last summer the piledriver
pounded my dreams;
the tram works locking in the river,
what was left of the flood plain -
made me think of the past,
locked in my genes,
of you.
Because I thought you'd be there,
guarding the Leen
as once you tried
to stop machines
when the Luddites marched
on Market Square
Were you there from the start,
when they burned the trees
for charcoal, when the Stone Age
slipped into iron?
So I walked to meet you,
along the valley floor
trying not to read the traffic
and finding nothing,
I climbed the hill towards The Tops,
over all those miles of -
I remember when this was fields.
but found no sign of you there.
I had a sense of something on Catfoot Lane
but it wasn't you, although I thought
I found your prints in the sticky mud
of the Dumbles.
Then I came to Red Lane,
and something shifted
in the mass of wild garlic.
I saw you, grubbing in the soil
and then I found the brilliant blue
of alkanet and had a memory
I've never owned,
of red dye wafting from the roots.
Did you plant them then? Close
to the weavers' cottages,
it could have been you.
So we'll try again tonight,
arrange to meet for one last time:
Eight o'clock,
at the World's End.
© Rosie Garner
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