NORTHWOOD BRICKYARD RE-VISITED

Posted by Admin on 25 May 2006, 12:00 am

Incorporal, decolourised,
the Parkhurst Forest, not a mile
away, and West Wight’s distant hills
accentuate the languor of
the afternoon.
The knee-high grassy cohorts shake
their spears –
a pleasing concept, for a friend
once lived hard by – a man then wont
to dwell on Roman times – in clay
to replicate those artefacts
in use when Pliny wrote from Prusa
and Trajan, best of caesars, held
his man in high esteem.
Poetic fancies were, I knew,
inherent in the man I had
in mind.
Historian, artist, dreamer, he too
there would have visualised, as I,
exulting legions when a field,
asway in Spring-breath airs, provoked
imagination – conjured thoughts
of helmed and armoured men.
Reminded thus, I trespassed in
a copse – a vantage point from which
to see the kilns and drying-sheds
I formerly knew well.
But all had gone – the site devoid
of any sign to link it with
a potter twenty-three years dead.