Landscape 27 All This Was Fields Poem by Stewart McKenzie

I read a story once about a prince who lived in a beautiful garden, happy and at peace. There came a time when disaster threatened. A great mob of hungry people advanced across the land, destroying everything in their path like a horde of locusts.

One day the prince saw the horde from his garden, a black cloud on the horizon creeping slowly towards him. A dark wave of calamity.

In the Prince’s garden grew a flowering tree with a magical property. Pluck a blossom and time would jump back.

The prince picked several flowers from the tree and the advancing horde retreated beyond the horizon but later came again. Again the prince picked flowers to stem their advance. Again the horde retreated but each time a little less.

The story tells of the plucking of the last flower, which only sets the horde back a few feet, and of the following tide of darkness.

The mother of a friend lived in rural Long Island. As the tide of suburbia advanced towards her she went mad and was imprisoned for prowling the new developments with a rifle, killing dogs.

I remember when all this was fields! Aye! And beer a penny a pint no doubt. We have no magic tree.