If Only


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FOR MIDSUMMER MORNINGS PAST PRESENT AND YET TO COME.

If Only.

By ancient ways they gained the place

By crooked road and stony, hollow way

By ford and footpath, bridleway and drovers track

By dawn’s shimmer

And sunrises dazzlingly hued glad tidings.

We are the old ones, their pennants read

Should anyone have been awake to see them

The hills are our bodies, the valleys creases hide

Our hidden secrets

And life springs ever renewed from there.

Long shadows shimmered, danced and dangled

‘Cross cock crowed grass and rabbit run

Morning, midsummer, and yet, if only we……

What then the difference

Long centuries, now forgotten, might have made.

By ancient arts they blessed the place

With censer, chalice, stick and stone

By murmured prayer and chanted rhythm

The beat of a small drum

A throbbing heartbeat echoed exactly.

We are the old ones, their seers said

Come again to this sacred place, this hilltop

This windswept scarp with rooks and ravens

Borrow the sharp edged wind

And seize for long moments flight’s swooping ecstasy.

By ancient knowledge they healed the place

Lore lost to all save a favoured few

Killed by ignorance, by unquestioning acceptance

Magic? It’s not the truth

And none stood to challenge or deny them.

We are the old ones, they chanted together

Come again to this windswept place, our cloaks

Billowing, wallowing, huge as galleons sailing away

Where eyes cannot see

And the heart not grieve for what was lost.

We are the old ones, they reaffirmed their status

You know us really, in your hearts, don’t you?

Because we once were, so you are, and you can be

On this midsummer

Unknown echoes, remnants then, in our genes unheeded.

By ancients bles’t they hailed the sun

With arms upraised, with joyous shout

And the wind died, cowed by their power

Sighing to a standstill

Softly into the grasses under their feet.

We are the old ones they roared together, their yells

Reverberating down the valley, rattling the trees

Echoing in our unconsciousness disturbingly, threateningly

Making us think, pause, worry and wonder

What we might have been, if only if only if only………