Ancient Village

 

An avalanche of white thorn

hanging above our heads

in hazel twilight.

The night lights of bluebells

thick around our feet,

faint silvery gleam of lake

between the trunks of trees,

birdsong everywhere.

These ancient walls whose stones

are moss-softened green pillows

are the skeleton of a lifestyle that once was.

Hand-built scripts of lake-side dwellers

vanishing in the evening light,

in the centuries’ accumulation

of humus and leaf-litter.

Cryptic now, fragmentary; 

no longer connected to their meanings;

too remote from their builders to carry 

the poignancy of their passing;

we stop a moment 

to admire a bend on the pathway: 

white-petalled, luminous.