Having moved, by buses, up the hill from Salford to Bury (To be within walk of new work, again), These stimuli surround between my abode and the factory As I follow the sun - its wax, its wane: Walking toward work and the rising sun, a morning chorus Rides the crisp breezy air of hill-farmland, While gravel, of road and path, beneath my plonked feet crunches, And P.V.C. flaps loose of its hay-stand.
Bumble bees, tree sparrows and robins bob along the hedgerows, Squirrels and hares hop ahead on my route; And on a weather-wrapped reservoir - glassy, or dulled by blows - Glide mute- and whooper-swans, ducks, geese and coot; Horses, goats, sheep and cattle laze and graze on fields of green - Fields they, in turn, feed, helping make hay; And, above, swifts and herons sometimes grace the aerial scene - A scene framed by a moorland chain of grey.
Slugs - some rusty, others pitch-black - slither on a clayey path, That slopes sharply beside the reservoir; And a whitegood on green-grass - a horse trough, once a human bath - Amuses me as I view from afar; As does Peel Monument, atop a distant Holecombe mount - By which an uncle and I once took lunch; Disturbed nettles - brushed in such distraction - make their bulwarks count, And a shed-side arbour demands a hunch.
One time, three sheep-dogs determined me lost, and rounded me up; Oftentimes, the Metro. tram rattles by; And, sometimes, a horse will urge me make handy a grassy cup, Or nudge for a scratch down its back and thigh; On cooler mornings, the dew on grasses soaks my joggers through, But beautifies clumps of whimsy grass-heads; And, already proceeding on his routine of chores to do, A farmer strong-hoses out the cowsheds.
Caravan-people leave their grouping to walk the well-worn track, And milk- and mail-vans squeeze tightly by; Antique farm-machines rust away in a grassed ramshackle-stack, And pigeons startle from their grassy lie; In sun, fishing-people and bathers dot the reservoir's shore, And, in shade, ferns the sides of path and stream; Near gates, manure fills the air and makes stepping a chore, But elsewhere the views are a poet's dream.
Magpies, near horses, bop around - perhaps for aroused worms; Laburnums sprung yellow, and hawthorns white, Pleasingly, in nature, border the fields of farming-firms, And help enclose this Radcliffe rural site; Plus, as I meander home from a day's factory toil, The sun, when it sets in a clear sky, Forms a large amber ball, behind a converted cotton-mill - Signalling another day almost by.