Climbing the Hill
by cricketjeff on June 6, 2011. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
Smoking defiantly Bessie steels herself for the hill ahead.
Slowly passing fields that were full when she first saw them,
filled with men working, children laughing, birds, rabbits,
the sights and sounds of everyday.
Summer rests easy on these lanes,
hedges full of colour, golden flecks of sunlight
through overhanging trees, the flash of a jay,
a pheasant, resplendent and foolish as it struts
towards cover.
And Bessie, wreathed in her cloud, seems at home here.
Seems born to break the peace and quiet, to shatter the centuries
that lanes like these wear so lightly. Her harsh iron tyres
have trodden this path for almost one hundred years, then
she was the shining promise of the future, and now
in polished black and gleaming brass, she is a memory
left over from a grandfather’s childhood,
a monster from another era, her roaring
not loud and obnoxious but dignified and purposeful,
fits into nature’s symphony.
Topping the hill, she quietens, pauses to catch her breath.
An old lady needs time, and she won’t be rushed,
cars pass now, filled with smiling faces, unangered by the delay.
Iphones make camera noises
and internal combustion engines growl quietly
as she turns into the field and waits for The Fair
English