Upon a hill, the manse dominated the landscape. <br />The largest house for many miles; double storeyed. <br />Ten rooms with outhouses, solid dark stone, <br />My mother's childhood home. <br /> <br />Winding past the manse, the road led down to the church, <br />Which stood way down in the valley, by the crook of the river, <br />Opposite a small disused paper mill. <br />A simple church, symbol of an austere, simple people. <br /> <br />Below the manse on the other side, <br />A couple of cobbled streets, cottage lined, <br />Led past a tiny post office, grocery shop and pub <br />To the two roomed village school-unutilised and empty. <br /> <br />To the north, derelict, stark remains of the coal mine, <br />Flooded pre-war, when the village began its slow decline. <br />To the south they worked the peat, cutting it line by line, <br />Laying it out like a dark chessboard along the hill's incline. <br /> <br />Lower down, a small coppice of slim, silver birches <br />The only trees in this vast, peat bogged moor. <br />Further on, stood large, lonely boulders, clothed in moss, <br />Great guardians of a forgotten land, brooding on some ancient loss. <br /> <br />For their company, only sheep, and moorhens hiding in the grass, <br />The odd curlew, wading in the marsh, <br />And the peewits high above, calling over and over again; <br />Their mournful cries like ghostly voices from the past. <br /> <br />Windswept, almost deserted, <br />The village somehow clung on, <br />Holding out as long as it could <br />Before the moors claimed it back as their own.<br /><br />Margery Rehman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/flashes-of-childhood-4-the-village-longrigend/
