Gate Road

 Down to the gate road,

And beside the running brook

The gargling of sea gulls

As the starving starlings look

The road is cold

The frost takes hold

But robin cheerily sings

things unfold

He is bold to talk of happy things

And mist enfolds the hills

And clings to valley bottoms

It is sticky in the trees

Where the river sheppey rolls

But not forgotten

And we wander over storks of fields

We crunch in icy puddles

As spinneys of trees shine on hill tops

And the sun breaks through

As a yellow shield shining

Through bright dew drops

And snaking along the treeline

The sheppey does take shape

And lifts the pages of the mist

Like bed sheets from its face

The old oak with the spidery crown

Waits beside the gate

And we take turns to clamber down

Across a broken field stile plate

The post is rotten in the ground

It wobbles and it shakes

As we walk around the Lorax patch

Where the cocks crow as men of state

The hens are brooding in their hutch

Like glamorous fashion models

Kept there ready to lay such and such

A golden egg to bottle

As proudly strutting cockerels parade

Their fleeces, like dandified fops

Their ruffs like Elizabethan curls

The court of the Queen of chops

Off with their heads she cries

And headless chickens run a mock

And chicken feet run down the street

And upon the hills spill their blood

As the Cathedral peeps over the brows

Of hills which are vacant of cows

And streaming white whiffs of clouds

Float gently in the blue

I can see through these see through days

Can you see through me too

Invisible in the olden ways

Awaiting the tides of new

As I bend down to tie my shoe

A cockerel cries a murder blue

And digesting all that we've been through

I fill it up and bring it to you

You offer it back like your take affront

I take it back but not from want

I wish I could give, but what I have

Is taken up by the ditch grab