He walked freely

He walked freely

The hard ground

Beaten flat by the feet of ancients

Long since gone.

All who this way passed

From daybreak until the setting of the sun,

Worked their way through, from blistered skin

To thickly callused workingmen's hands

Striving to harvest the land

Unto the breaking of the flesh,

Hard lives

The only reward.

Serfdom tied so many

To bleak feudal toil

There were graves on either side

Wooden crosses, fallen.

Only the old stone markers stood

Like rotten teeth,

Broken apart by frost and sun alike,

So many people were laid to rest

Where they died

Forever part of England.

Grist to the old mills

The sinew and gristle of an Empire.

It is no wonder they flew the coup

When set free

Found a respite to the west

Or down below where the sun

Always shines.

Even as their dreams were forever filled

With past sorrow

The clash of steel

The old wooden ships that took them,

The stink of Bilgewater

The horror of steerage passage

Memories melded into the genes.

It always amazed him

How his mind wandered further than his feet

As far afield as a singularity

An event horizon

Coffee table books and Stephen Hawking,

When but for something inexplicable

Appearing out of thin air

There was nothing.

No time or space or resting place

No wending a weary way home

Over the rolling hills

No home.

No future past or present

No time and no space

What a strange anomaly

To carry with him

Through the quietude of these nostalgic days

Working his way back home

Through the still

Green fields of England.