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Lynne Rees

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Making History

(Aldon Farm, October 6th 1909. Pockets picked - 497.)

I can still make out where they stand - the sepia sheds
are garages now.  And the walnut tree fell through
the roof of one 20 years ago.  And the time - sunlight
casting shadows to their right - late afternoon, around 5.

Time stopped for this - the hop-team posing with their tools,
trousers tied below knees, the plump and numbered
hop-pocket on its side, a roll of hessian, a measuring bin,
stakes, unravelling twine.  The photographer’s

an invisible force controlling this scene from an infinity
of others, on a day when everything is right -
no pickers’ strike, no rain or wilt, drought or blight;
though shards of October sun could be splintering

wife-beaters, drunks, thieves or cheats in whom we’re
not even the beginnings of thoughts.  But 90 years on
here we are in Kodak Gold just yards away from where
they posed, obeying a call to smile, glasses filled

with wine, behind - my writing house and further away,
still fields but without their hops, the village, the quarry
now being filled.  And as I can see a dozen threads
of stories spinning from those men but choose one,

history becoming my fiction, someone else will choose
what they want to see in us, and maybe it will be
a good day - there’s golden light, and shadows only
slightly darken our faces, like looking through honeycomb.

Page(s) 40

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