Along fields' listless bordering paths we trod,
Mother, Father, our padding dog,
And there above us, hovering high,
Hung shadowed a cross of silent wings.
And here, beneath my childish tripping feet,
Upon the rising heat from broken stones,
Did loft a haze of iridescent mites,
Their myriad glints my glee to glean.
But what came then, I can't quite say,
Time's mist too dense through which to spy,
Save to say: another magic day
In which my enchanted childhood played.
Of what now lasts into my present time,
Beneath the tarmac of this motorway,
Or underfoot of office and of retail park:
Little, I know, of part-remembered walk.
Not much, perhaps, a cherished memory,
But enough to know that here once lay
A corner of this hallowed fruitful land
That nurtured such as I, this Englishman.
(c) Clive S. Johnson 2017
