Archaeology

We went to the old Brickyard
Bronte and I
In search of the past.
We turned stones
To reveal secrets,
Rolled over decaying logs
Where shimmering
Green beetles scurried.
We were not searching for the Grail,
But for signs
To bring past and present together;
To find order in the chaos.
Bronte, only eight years old,
Poked and pried, dug and scraped,
Letting the past lives of others
Fall through her tiny fingers:
Shards of brown earthenware,
Fragments of blue willow pattern –
Perhaps the Sunday best –
Buttons and glass bottle tops,
Small medicine bottles,
Bits of broken clay pipe,
A red brick with Buxton
Stamped on it:
All were seen as treasure,
All were important
To a young child’s mind.
Perhaps the lip of an orange bowl
Had belonged to great grandma Sharp?
The slender cream pipe stem
To great uncle Wilf, discarded
As he laboured in the Top Garden?
Then stooping, Bronte held aloft
A badge encrusted with age,
A small blue shield
Once worn with pride.
Did this once belong to my father?
Notts & Derby Sherwood Foresters,
A badge he carried
Through five years of campaign.
My brother once playing games
In Grandma’s Wood, lost such a badge.
Had the token
Sought a granddaughter's hand?
My father never lived to see
His youngest grand child,
But perhaps past and present
May still embrace
In hallowed ground.