Pennerley Shropshire UK

The Shropshire lane
Makes its uncertain way
Passed the old school house
Untaught for many a year,
The children now with siblings of their own.
Passed the old mine shafts
Where lead and silver
Long since ceased.
Crumbled walls where once
A poor man kept alive, but just,
A family far too large for comfort.
Where a thousand dug the earth
Nothing to be seen....pulled down
No more silver no more lead
No house remains.
The old school now a wild-life centre
where walkers read the walls.
Histories with blurred photos
Grey as life once led by children
Sorting stone from silver-ore.
When Romans came they found the ore
Made pipes to teach us plumbing,
Kept the silver for themselves.
The land polluted now with lead
Struggling birch,and purple heather,  
Black with autumn winberry
For pies and puddings.
 
The slow road, climbs uncertain
Avoiding steeper slopes..
Right hand bends and left...
Pot-hole hazard,
Warn the car take care!.
 
Bleaker now the hedges broken
Only wire to keep the sheep.
Not much money in this land
fit only for romantic rich,
or farmer locked in poverty.
The day is cold, not a soul in sight.
Splashing higher up the hill
The road swings left and narrows
Mind the tractor!This road is his,
Go back to town you townie.
 
The mountain range spikes the sky
The Devils Chair barely fifteen feet
(But once a mountain range
Older than the Himalaya)
worn away by time
a million years and more,
Or so I'm told.
 
Eastward now, watch the clouds
Woolly purple-grey feather-light,  
green the moorland hill  
against the pale blue sky.
So quiet no birds sing,
trees sway the breeze
Heather stiff and low,
grudging shakes a little.
Miles away Wales is west in mists,
Housman's Coloured Counties,south.
We are alone the dog and I,
walkers long since gone.
An hour more it will be dark,
Frost in the air.
Time for home and cocoa,
but Jack says no,
So I stay watch him sniff the scents.
mobile 'phone ashamed to ring
In my jacket pocket.
 
So home,
An hour's drive down lanes
Still uncertain of the way
And think of arguments....
the fights that bent its way
two hundred years ago....
as hedges sprang, divisive.....
Centuries slipping by.....
Houses built of brick,
Plastic windows,no thatch.
Forgotten now those children,
Scratching lessons on a slate
weighed down with lead.....and poverty,
who took their skills elsewhere.