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John Greening

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A Huntingdonshire Nocturne

They dance like paper cut-outs on a length of fishing line
across our windy county. The tail of a kite so high
it’s almost out of sight, the cross of a man’s agony

held by a child with his hands together on holy ground.
They dance – a tower, a spire; a porch, a flying buttress –
to the fantasia of an organ, to the thunder-repelling carillon

and they call to dance those who have forgotten what it means
to stop walking, stop running and skip, hop,
hornpipe to the music in the nave. If ever the wind drops,

what then? And already there is a change in the weather. One paper
cut-out is gone, another is torn, the kite itself is flying
erratically, the dance is uncertain, the music is played by old

arthritic fingers, there are bell-ropes hanging unused. Sing
your Shaker tunes, sing your Wesley anthems, sing, sing,
hymns ancient and modern, for the child with his hands together,

for the children who will find the paper fragments littering the
                                                                          landscape,
make boats of them, make a treasure hunt of them, and not know
the secret in these crossed sticks, this fabric, the very wind.

 

Page(s) 69

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