Apethorpe Northhamptonshire UK

Harvest by the Willow Brook    
limestone walls and thatch,    
autumn fields and September songs,  
red kites  reeling on thermal currents    
while pheasants scurry and rabbits hide.
   
Through the night  tractors wheel    
as combines gobble up the grain,    
farmers fretting at the clouds    
the nightmare of the dryer spoiling sleep.
    
The old quarry now calm, pools    
where once ore was hewn, the empty tracks    
crunch their way as foot-paths,    
where steam once held sway to Corby.
   
Jack has no memories of yesteryear    
not born when ore was calcined in the night,    
but the lanes are full of smells    
long grass to chew and tempting posts.   
Trees, once saplings in my youth    
what more to need at eight?
   
Peeping high above the trees    
steeples simple in their symmetry,    
which is which hard to tell    
the same hands and chisels worked the stone    
travelling never far from home,    
one ambition shared, never heard of Scarborough.
   
The pub enough,shop and vicar    
blacksmith and the thatcher.    
Maypole dancing, tumbles in the hay,    
long nights, clip rugs, knitting socks,    
salted beans, cold slab in the larder    
stark reality,peggy stick and mangle,    
nostalgic pictures now hung on gallery walls.