Fire on Beacon Hill
Leaving Loughborough,
Watching from a window of a speeding train
I saw the familiar streets and country lanes,
Backyard slums over zigzagging fences,
Telegraph poles that strung loops of wire behind them,
Their flickering shadows left to loom,
Characters soon forgotten in the sunlight.
Hunch-back mounds mantled in embroidery colours
Covered the downs of the countryside,
Dressed in changing shades of under blade grass,
Folded in the winds flow
Across blankets of green and flowers.
The waves of wind raked fields and twining rivers
Strode past my light-soaked eyes.
The sun glimmering through a cloudy sky,
Casting mottled hues upon
The far off hills of Charnwood.
The strange, quiet distance viewed from the window.
Scenery somehow unreal
In the comfortable rocking motion of the train
With only the sound of the wheels,
Jig, jogging drums along the railway.
Reminding me of very different times, so vivid in my mind.
The familiar view of Beacon Hill upon the horizon.
Every day we had seen the view from my window
In our Loughborough house of Charnwood Road.
For in recent weeks the knowledge of the inevitable
Was forever coming closer,
The time to leave Loughborough and lose each other forever.
In the days before, we made many visits to the forest
To walk among the ground ivy and heather.
Walking up high slopes, passing aged oak trees,
Along varicose paths of twisted roots,
Over rugged jags of flint jutting from the rocky ground.
This was Beacon Hill
In evenings of mellow Autumn skies.
To touch and hold each other,
To at least make this place known to us before parting.
The shouts of children, sound of roaming dogs,
Dog mess, mud and soggy moss,
Smell of damp rotting wood and scent.
Soaking our senses in the presence
Where russet ochre's of fallen leaves
Blended so well with the coats of animals,
Swift flocks of birds flew overhead on their way away .
A quivering breeze against our rugged clothes,
Giving our bodily curves away, whispering to our ears
As our hair was blown into knots.
Nothing could really be said
Other than what was seen and felt,
Just to remember those last days together.
© Christopher English
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