Limp flags

Limp flags

Hang from lamp posts

Tired old things

Tattered and torn

Covered in gravy

The dustbins fight

For supremacy

Up and down the street

Dirty pretty things

Rubbish more out than in.

On the next street over

There is more order

The flowers grow taller

Bowed heads

Swaying gently

In the breeze

Weeping for each other

And the state of play

Across the road

Where a fallow field

Is covered in cobwebs.

So many people

Died there

Over the years

Buried in shallow graves

Civil War dead

Is what I heard

The locals know it as

Battle Field

They forget why

Few people find enough time

To keep in touch

With the land

The weft of history

The wealth of romance

When scratching a living

Means penny pinching

From the poor box

To buy the tar

To fill the potholes

On the road to glory

We have been looking for

Since the land was sold

For a song

To a hedge fund.

Which doesn’t mean

What you think it does

They are not

The good custodians

Of rural England

You had hoped for,

Nobody is.