Apethorpe Northamptonshire UK

Harvest by the Willow Brook    
limestone walls and thatch,      
autumn fields and September songs,      
red kites  reel 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,  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.