He unhitched a tin bath from his cart
and filled it from the spring,
then steaming water from his kettle,
he lifted and poured it in.

And then he picked his daughter up,
his lovely poppet dear,
and popped her in the piping bath
a cloud pond still and clear.

‘Too hot’, ‘too hot’ she laughed aloud
so he stirred it round and round
and a rust red stain washed from his hands
as a memory unwound.

And then she spoke like a bright bell,
like a cuckoo’s voice in May,
as the sun dew lipped its afterglow
at the compline of the day.

Part II

‘I’ll tell a story from my mouth
of a dream I dreamt Oh daddy dear
and the world it was a sorrow place,
when child and man had sunken face
and the earth was dust and drear.

From East to West and West to East
no blade of grass did grow;
and all the trees had been stripped bare
and the winds had ceased to blow. 

Ash and chestnut, elm and beech
were lifeless standing things
and dry dead twigs were rattling
like a thousand golden rings.

Every crystal chalk stream
was a dust dry ridden track
no sweet sucking from the trout pools
or beaded otter back.

No beasts that crawl upon the earth,
no moths or butterflies,
no spiders or slow pulsing worms,
no birds to mark the skies.

A throng of people gathered there
imploring God on high
but no god was there to hear them,
he’d left them bye and bye.

Little children cried aloud
through the stagnant air;
asking why the world was barren,
like a bone picked bare.

And their mothers and their fathers
could not look them in the eye
they’d consumed most every living
thing that could walk, or crawl or fly.

Then it seemed that all the people
were calling out as one,
a million, million, raw swollen tongues
clacking at the sun.

Please note that this is an extract from a larger work