Shadow on the drying green

Shadows on the drying green,
tatters in the shed,
cobwebs on the window glass,
red admiral hanging dead;

stairways and bannisters
leading to where I slept
in a tiny upstairs bedroom;
all my dreams were swept

by wind and light and weather
in the days that I lived there:
through spring into summer,
till autumn fields grew bare

and winter froze the midden
behind the drystone wall;
still frozen as I remember it
and the snow begins to fall.

© BH, 2024

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This began as something different. It’s a thing about poems. The other drifted into another place - still a childhood remembering but, well, different. It was in Scots for a start and rhymed and repeated its way along.

This, on reflection, is more of a Thomas Hood picture of childhood recollected. I’m less concerned with heaven than with the fact of time passing.

It is, of course, one story of time, its passing and our relationship with it.