Narroways

A cut-through hill, some rock, some spoil
from the three railways:
one to Gloucester and the North,
one to Avonmouth and Severnbeach
and the third up from Tesco and Royate Hill:
the arch is still there at the roundabout
where the cyclepath traces the old raised track.

But on Narroways
this third track’s now a green rink
between sloping walls and it’s there
you can see the little outcrop,
red rock on sage-green,
Keuper Marl, tea-green marl,
old stuff from freshwater lakes
when this land was a drifting desert
and the equator was as near as London.

So that’s Narroways. Brambles and bushes seem impassable
but are pretty well scoured out by dogs;
there’s a little hilltop where we found two candles
over from the equinox and a tattered daffodil,
and on that morning, a bumble bee, a couple of birds
and the smell of fox.

We’ve slashed and dug out some of the brambles and planted trees,
wild pear, mulberry, quince and apples
with lofty hopes for the fowls of the air
to perch in - we’d like angels to land there
now and then and lady’s slipper, not motor tyres
to mark their tread;

so what’s Narroways? a small, lopsided hill,
pinched between tracks,
backing Boiling Wells Lane.
Not much, but we care for it.

by Chris Thirlway