I can see the old familiar hills from here,
mottled green and blue, with bramble-berried slopes,
they rise beyond a patchwork quilt of cottage roofs,
enshrining chemical waste and long forgotten hopes.

I can see steep pathways, well tried, shining slides,
on brackish, struggling grass and chemical dross,
compacted now by tobogganing door or bathtub
racing boys, glowing in triumph or warlike in loss.

I can see an old gun-turret, rusting, resting, and waiting,
no Woodbine-smoking Home-Guard gunner will come,
the last air-raid warning, banshee-like, has faded away,
the last all-clear sounded, the sirens now silent and done.

I can see between the cleft of hills, the rippling stream,
and the meandering pathway where men ride, work-bound,
their brew-can and dinner-bulging saddle-bagged bicycles,
cursing rough ground, too late to go the long way round.

I can see the lonely, mostly silent, weathered wooden hut,
where the night-watcher potters away his life in days,
with his smoking-chimney, kettle-boiling, bacon-frying stove,
and with Moggie his loyal friend, both so set in their ways.

I see those man-made hills from here, and so much more,
across the gravelled road, beyond the broken stone walls,
in summer haze, or drifting, chemical factory smoke,
that sears the throat and blisters the lungs as night falls.

 I can see bright lights, beyond those shame-darkened hills,
as they conspire to hold back the defiant, injurious night,
cheerless prisoners on high towers, great orbs that glow,
so to hide the truly dreadful dark from our fast failing sight.

 When I was quite young, from one of my favourite vantage points, on top of the brick gatepost at the front of my house, I could see across to the west. To the nearby hills, to where the Transporter Bridge crossed the River Mersey. I could also see the Cheshire hills and beyond them I could imagine Glyndwr's Wales, the land of the Mabinogion, ‘where mightier hills than ours unchallenged and unchanging stood'. Yes, yes, yes I could, I still can.

From Road to the Oak revised © Dermott Ryder