Strawberry fields

 Well the time came again

That a train visited the hills

The train of volunteers

Driven by their common wills

Through

Long forgotten glades

Fields of silver

Fields of gold

Fields of bronze

Fields once sold

Now bought back again

All for the train

All for the memory

All for the future

All for the history to be

Tied up like sutures

Never leaving a loose end

Never knowing what's round the bend

Or down the tracks

The strawberry fields forever

snippets and swathes

 Slashing through the teasel

The herb Robert and the thistle

Laying low the nettles

Living and dead as a steam whistle

Stalks and blades

And crunching like a samurai sword

Through baboo

Gone the days

Of Railway glades

But the thought remains

It's true

Sh sh go the sibilant slashers

Sh sh go the wheels on the tracks

Sh sh she says

Hush hushing the railway backs

hiss, hiss go the "S's" of pistons

clip,clip go the volunteers' snippers

What use is all this now?

Hush the railway line

Life on the line

 Johnny's on the line

He's getting no sleep today

They don't like you for your personhood

They call themselves the Robinhoods

The Forest rangers

The track defenders

But the fruit gets squished in their grips

As insult off their red lips trips

They'll use you on the Strawberry Line

They'll take your body and soul

They'll tie you down and wait

Until across you bicycles roll

Don't go and sell your body

For the price of their coal

The respect you'll earn, will not burn

Hot enough fires in your soul

They talk in their drivel

Of self-aggrandizing fame

To keep alight their own torch bright

While the light house is aflame

Everyone wants a beacon

A dream in which to believe

Come and be a follower

You might give but you won't receive

Not unless it is their scorn

From the early morn until the Eve

For their crown of thorns

Is always worn

whether borrowed or whether thieved 

Statues of you

 If I were a man of stone

My sin would go, I would atone

You could stand me up upon a plinth

In praise of my mighty, heroic stints

But I never meant to be just so

In life I was of flesh and bone

And weak moments had I many

I'd be a millionaire by now if I had a penny

If I were a man of glass

You could throw a stone

And I would pass

All shattered into pieces

Lying on the grass

If I were a man of glass

If I were a man of grass

You'd grow me up

In your fields vast

And crop me down

In swathes of your sythe

And lie me flat in waves of lives

And each life you'd gather up

thrash my corn and fill your cup

If I were a man of wood

Well no that would do no good

You'd chop me down

With a swing of your ax

Lay me on the river of your tax

Float me down to build ships and dams

Then I'd be shipwreck or a log jam

So I am a man of metal

You've turned into a robot kettle

I boil up I boil down

You switch me on and off and frown

This metal man talks so funny

Let's buy another with our money

Throw him on the scrap heap of dreams

Discarded, washed up in life's streams

Come and show me an element of what you are

Be it a cow or elephant be it lion or jaguar

We all are made up of parts,

All are pieces of another

So when you think that you won't fit

Just remember your mother

She had you for some reason

Though I can't think what it is

It surely wasn't to make money

As that seems but a swizz

Perhaps it was to be funny

Perhaps to drink some fizz

It seems that some only wish that honey

Were made of swiss cheese and is

So don't stand me up and make me last

I am not a hero who lived in the past

Were they ever as big as their myths?

It seems to me something's amiss

Believe it or not

 He's the Robinhood

With his band of Merry Men

All Working in the wood

And as I write my pen

A felling they go like Jacks

Fighting Giants that them surround

In their Castle towers

With horse and fox and hound

Farther off is Maid Marianne

She's tied to a railway track

And her bold Prince Charming

Is racing to save her, breaking his back

Nearby is the Sheriff of Nottingham

They've been fighting him off, still

But he won't let them across his land

Not until they settle his bill

But a toll road is not quite what they had

In mind

So they'll levy a tax upon the rich

To give back to the poor in kind

Oh we're living in a fairy tale

It's a land of make believe

That all this stuff could be made up

You better hope Merlin's got 

Something up his sleeve

And King Arthur is riding tonight

With the goats and the Fairies of Neve

Because it's time to vote folks

Between the mirror and smokes

It's the Election of Midsummer's Eve

Oberon is winning in Hungary

Puck is Warlord I believe

Ariel has got her hair stuck in the drier

And is blowing hot air over Steve

The Astronomers would not believe it

For they had stars in their eyes

And could you  Adam and Eve it

When God heard that Jesus had died

Everyone wept in their tombs

Everyone even sad I

Eye had tears in his bed

But it was better than stick in his eye

Fly, fly went the moon

Fly went the moon in the sky

Honey I think I shrunk the moon

When I turned the telescope on the sly

Not much could be seen of the drunk sun in the sky

The summer already had stunk like a skunk after it'd died

So I banged my head and went to bed

And hoped it was a just a big fat lie

A lot of changes

 Change is in the air

Change for good or bad

Change it isn't fair

But it's all we've ever had

I am going to change you

You will change me too

Nothing we can do

But you know it is true

Change in the weather

Change in pressure

Change in the politics

Change is made to measure

Change in money

Change in Church

Change in possession of confession

Change is ever funny

Change can be scary too

Makes you think you're drunk or dizzy

Standing at a great height

Looking over all of this makes me wonder

If I might

But stress is a deceiver

Plays on the body and mind

Brings you over the limit of sleeping

Brings you a bundle of weeping

Brings you roots and nerves

Brings you pain

That keeps you leaping

Up the next grapevine

Chasing after a rumour

That flits like a bird

Rumour bird keeps on speaking

Change is good just a matter of time

The Heart of Wessex

 Haul away to Salisbury

I'll not be back today

We load the stock

With brick and rock

And Quarrying we may

Well Johnny's on the line ma

He's a rolling car

The buds are blooming in the sidings

The broom and Buddleia

They get on board at Weymouth

They alight thar at Frome

And by the time of Castle Cary

Well there wasn't any room

They've been a holidaying

Down the Heart of Wessex line

But it's alright, the car is tight

Johnny's rolling all the time

Well haul away to Salisbury

And back to Cattistock

We hit bad weather 

At Marston Magna

And Rolled back to West Radstock

Now nevermind Bathampton

Westmoreland or Bath Spa

It's Limpley Stoke

With the Freshford folk

Who'll climb into his car

He never knew a girl before 

Like the one from St Anne's Park

She could quick draw

And from her maw 

She drew a big dog's bark

It was called the Heart of Wessex

the beating Vena Cava

The artery, the pulmonary

The vein and semi quaver

If ever there was a left leg

They'd call it Weymouth Quay

If ever blood went to their head

In Temple Meads they'd be

Now here's the heart of Wessex

A pumping people home

Up and down the West Country

From Salisbury to Frome

Now speaking of a right hand

Across to Clevedon pier

Upon the Cheddar Valley line

All drinking Strawberry beer

Upon the Great Western Railway

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

He built the bridge across the Avon cliffs

Johnny knew him very well

Now Johnny comes a walking

Down the tracks that he once rolled

The tunnels where he blew his whistle

Along strawberry hills he strolled

Now the beating heart of Wessex doesn't

Pump no more of his blood

But the tracks that once held his stacks

Are now covered in his mud

Yes Johnny's in the cab

Shovelling the coal

And he's the steam of fires seen

As the rolling stock does roll

And the body is not working

But it's still living mind and soul

And the ghost of Johnny Firkin

Still hauls down on the Wessex roll