Visiting Lyddington - a contrast
Today I was sun-dazzled, dream-drawn
By ochre stone of Rockingham in the heat
Of a rich soft June. The slowly swimming
Welland undulates in her valley and stirs
Life with serpentine thighs - and life blooms:
A scent of green and growing things so rich
The mind dilates; great gulping breaths
Of growth itself, and the air sultry and sweaty.
She wears her viaduct of Edwardian brick
Like a cobalt chain on the belly of a beautiful woman,
Harringworth the amber jewel in her soft navel.
This land's still Anglo-Saxon, hacked and ploughed
From marsh and forest, turning the thick clay soil
Til it settles and gentles in the heart of a sense of home.
That blood still flows in names like Thorpe and Kirby
Carved on the Memorial Cross and still alive:
A tap root bedded in the nation's dawn.
Back in the city the city fires itself up
Hugging itself to its breast it embraces a headbutt
Paints itself red, pukes in the gutter and pushes
Drugs and Cathedrals in and out its skin.
It paints its latticed sky with planes and kills:
Built on bone it raves in underground rhythms
Dances the dawn on its skylines, is suddenly still.
At heart a whore its touch is cloudburst kaleidoscope
And brushing in wonder the cheek of its first ever lover.
Sleeping in decibel flowers it knows and tells
Nothing but everything happens. Sings pain and pleasure
In seconds from C to sea. Subsonics shudder
The whining lines on the edge of sight seesaw
And a million minds hook up and take the world
Apart again. Its future is ever present.
By Clodhopper.