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Jeff Vinter

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Powerstock

Memories of West Dorset, 1975

Say, do branch trains pause at Powerstock still
on the lonely line under Eggardon Hill?
No, there are foxes and brambles there,
and the railway's course is bereft and bare.
But the lanes remain silent, then as now,
bar the wheeling gulls and the lumbering plough.

Say, are there crimson cider apples still
in the tumbling orchard by the gnarled old mill?
No, there are nettles and rosebay there,
hiding clay tiles cracked by the sky's long glare.
But the stone-flecked stream turns its warp of weeds
while the waving grasses hang their heads with seeds.

There were silver shafts of dust-speckled light
as the sun declined into late summer night,
years in the scrubbed wooden table's grain
mapped in shadows cast from a cobwebbed pane.
The door opened out to a stone-clad street,
then the station hill, and the whispering wheat.

Page(s) 5

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