Robin the Poet: Time Raft

Time Raft 

Feet on the grass,

walking a steep track,

up to the cow grazed common.

A raft when I reach,

its level plain, 

ferrying flowers,

over its rumpled turf,

and travelled tracks:

cowslips in spring, 

knapweed and orchids in summer. 

A raft as i trundle along needle slim ways,

embroidering the common,

a map of wayfarers ghosts.

Tinkers, drovers, gypsies, 

all passed over this high common,

as if carried on a raft,

taking them down to the valleys:

Stroud, 

Woodchester,

Chalford, 

Brimscombe, 

Slad. 

A raft those limestone bones,

a million sea creatures of deep antiquity,

crushed into Cotswold stone,

desired by the clothiers.

quarriers tramped up here, 

where i stand in a hollowed grassy scar,

imagining the horses pulling carts,

listening to the quarriers beating

out the chant of iron on stone. 

Over this common land,

i travel as a butterfly, 

from life story of one traveller,

to songs of creaking wagon wheels:

a pace that continues,

still today over the raft of Rodborough Common, 

Robin performed this on Rodborough Common on John Clare Day - a day of collaborative reading and walking through the landscape.