Fairfield Low. (The Gift).

Even in sunlight and crowned by blue sky

The hilltop seems remote and brooding:

The holder of astonishing secrets.

Among the sycamore and beech trees,

Shadows issue from its depth like left-over

Fragments of night.

On the green hillside, ancient spells

Appear to weave through the sun-dried meadows

Waving and rippling

Like a great hay coloured ocean.

A buzzard circles over-head, ploughing furrows

In the wispy clouds, its wings stretching out

To embrace the patchwork landscape;

The fossil walls, old straight tracks,

Lonely copses and sacred springs:

And the shadow of ancient groves.

Within the dapple shade of the copse

The cairn lays mute, reclaimed by nature;

Weather torn, plundered by history.

Yet for all its scars, it rests serene in its permanence.

Once a white shining beacon in the prehistoric landscape,

It called out to its god Etharun, the stag-horned Cernunnos

And fellow hilltop mounds; their ancient music

Now but a whisper through morning mist.

Beneath the dome of limestone, fossil pressing down on fossil,

A young girl reached out to embrace the after life;

A precious light blue bead clutched in a tiny hand:

A gift, a treasured gem to take on the final journey.

Now tree roots delve and snake into the tomb,

And what secrets remain find life in phloem and xylem

And rise to meet the rays of a familiar sun.