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
