Friday, October 29, 2010

Country Station


COUNTRY STATION

Platform.
Destination, homecoming.
Welcoming, calming, mellow.
Someone to meet me.
Station.

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A Re-enactment 

TOOTLE ROCK.

They called it 'Tootle Rock' for the words slipped off the tongue,
But it was known as Toot Hill in the days when the world was young.
A flat rock jutted out above the valley far below,
In a way that urged me to take a stone and give it a mighty throw!
I listened for the falling, and, finally came the thud,
As it landed far below me, 'plop!', down in the river's mud.
I pretended I was Icarus, though I didn't dare to fly!
I felt so poised, so elevated, free and young and high.
They told me of the legend that added to its charms;
How Oliver Cromwell came there in the days when he took up arms.
How the Roundheads perched their canon exactly where I sat,
Above the river on a rock that was firm and table-flat.
Someone showed me indentations that, surely, the canon made,
And I felt I heard the warlike cries and I saw a flash of blade!
What a way to learn of history! Even if the tale were false?
It was the 'feel' that mattered, more than any history course
*
The View from Tootle Rock
*

2 comments:

Margaret Gosden said...

I like the composition of the Country Station. Quiet.
The noise in cities is 98% too high, a lethal level to hearing eventually. I would like to alight at a quiet
station in the country like this!

Peggy said...

I like the station poem especially and the photo. The words convey such an atmosphere of the small train station. And thanks for the small history lesson! I do like this way of learning history.