what price the Lewesdon Hill?
what speed the Stour, Frome and Piddle roar?
too far from Golden Cap!
my Purbeck Stone in tender hands
drifting with the summers wind through Blackmore Vale.
how quickly comes and goes
these seasons of the heart.
the spells of stones on limescale
the wells of a Dorset eye
where once I breathed with the ghost of Hardy\'s pen.
now sixty years and counting still
the love lines of my wrist
not deep enough to sing a sad farewell
nor high enough to reach a stairwells chime.
an orphan to a child
from Jesus to a hand
aged wings now caged inside the darkness of this plague!
a ballad for a dying man
punching through the windows of my ears.
in Kings Wood,
where once I shared my carpet with the Yellow Kidney Vetch
sketched an arrow pointing south to Bucknowle Farm,
saw far beyond Old Harrys Rocks,
kissed Kimmeridge on a Dancing Ledge
and watched The Purbeck Marble shed it\'s skin.
how quickly flows my sorrow through my jumbled mind.
how silently my coarse veins weep and fail
as now,
with the Sheeps Bit in my Bindweed sea
an orphan to a child
from Jesus to a hand
young hands for the closing of my eyes
Tilly Whim caves for the safekeeping of my heart;