Denne Hill Walk 1/3/14

Bundled boys into the car

Avoiding eye contact with neighbour cleaning car

He most likely heard my shouts

No dialogue just a stiff wave

Head bowed shammy in motion

Drive into centre towards old town

Where are we going dad?

Park between two transits

On historic street leading to parish church

Lucky to find a space on Sunday

Youngest tells me I look like a tourist

Large digital slr round neck

Walk past the exiting churchgoers

Daffodils swaying on the graves

A delicious contrast in the sun

Balloons tied to a gatepost

Now starting to shrivel a little

Youngest son darts away from the flag stone path

Down to the stream

Oh no exclaims eldest boy

We stoop to pull him out

Thick mud up to his thighs

Forced to beat a retreat

I drive home at speed

Youngest tells mother I hate him

I return to the historic street alone

This time parking with ease

Church has emptied out

The bell strikes eleven as I round the Norman bell tower

Daffodils sway this time in grey light

I go on up and over the bridge

Past the cricket ground

Pausing to fathom the score box

An enchanted house

Part facade part real.

On I go over the iron railway bridge

Marooned tree carcasses

Fallen heroes on the gently sloping field

Then whales split asunder

Charred blubber

I pass the remains of a fire

Empty (I presume) cans of cider

Please don’t light fires

Or take alcohol onto the property

Up and up past a brick gate post top

Left on the hill for sledgers benefit

Memorial iron bench at the summit

The spires hold no meaning

And I move on

The mud thickens and the undergrowth encroaches

The smell of decay rises

The boys would have loved this

Mud squelches slasher movie sound effect style

Fallen trunk across the slimy trail

Solid immobile and lifeless

I crouch underneath

On and on the smell rising

Branches and trunks split with brutal simplicity

No sense to this

And now as I reach another brow

The smell of burning creeps into the frame

The forest opens into a muddy plateau

A country house daddy building a bonfire

Daffodils below the wall of the plateaued garden

Ordered and compliant

This is a neighbourhood watch area

I turn back this time on tarmac drive

Slooshing my boots in pothole puddles

Back down into the woods

Weaving through the broken trunks

Back at the fallen oak I stop

Compelled to stroke the hulking form

Still slumped across the path

Its flesh still bright and glistening in the gash

That’s it old boy – all those years

All I can muster by way of comfort

New barbed wire fence

Leaves me wondering where to go now

Out of the woods to the top of the slope

Below I see their forms still lying there

Alone and exposed. Unseen.

Broken but still breathing

On top of the iron railway bridge

I close my eyes feeling suspended

A judder passes through my legs

A premonition of the London train

I watch it pass under me

Back then past the scoring-box

Down to the river

Children gathered in a huddle

Fizzy coke bottle rocket splurging

I smile and look away

That’s litter states a girl's voice

On I go this time another way

Out past a towering wall

Into a Sainsbury’s car park

So this is where I am

Then at last a cut-through

Back to the historic street

Returning to the car from the other side

Not a hero but somehow changed

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe