Shropshire In January Poem by John Rickell

The Shropshire lane makes its uncertain way
Passed the old school house at Pennerley
Untaught for many a year,
The children now with siblings of their own.
Passed the old mine shafts
Where lead and silver long since ceased.
Crumbled walls where once
A poor man kept alive, but just,
A family far too large for comfort,
Where a thousand dug the earth.
Nothing to be seen....pulled down
No more silver no more lead no house remains.
The old school, a wild-life centre
Where walkers read the walls,
Histories with blurred photos
Grey as life once led by children
Sorting stone from silver-ore.
When Romans came they found the ore
Made pipes to teach us plumbing,
Kept the silver for themselves.
The land polluted now with lead
Struggling birch, heather and ginger bracken
Black with autumn whinberry for pies and puddings
The slow road, climbs, uncertain,
Avoiding steeper slopes right hand bends and left...
Pot-hole hazard warns the car take care! .
Bleaker now the hedges broken only wire to keep the sheep,
Not much money in this land fit only for romantic rich,
Or farmer locked in poverty.
The day is cold, not a soul in sight.
Splashing higher up the hill
The road swings left and narrows,
Mind the tractor this road is his
Go back to town you townie!
The mountain range spikes the sky
The Devils Chair barely fifteen feet
(But once a mountain range older than Himalaya
Worn away by time a million years and more,
Or so I'm told)
East-ward, watch the clouds, woolly purple-grey
Feather-light upon Long Mynd hills
Green against the pale blue sky.
Quiet, no birds sing, no trees sway the breeze
Heather stiff and low, grudging shakes a little
Miles away Wales is west, in mists,
Housman's coloured-counties, south.
We are alone the dog and I, walkers long since gone,
An hour more it will be dark, frost is in the air.
Time for home and cocoa but Jack says no,
So I stay and watch him sniff the scents.
Mobile phone ashamed to ring in my jacket pocket.
So home an hour's drive down uncertain lanes
And think of arguments, the fights that bent its way
Two hundred years ago as hedges sprang, divisive.....
Centuries slipping by, houses, brick, not cob
Plastic windows and no thatch.
Forgotten now those children,
Scratching lessons on a slate,
Weighed down with lead.....and poverty,
Who took their skills elsewhere.