Solstice...

...or Equinox, it's hard to care
when wintry bites kiss skin, waft hair
around your face, while ghost-white sun
hangs overhead, illuminating
frosty diamonds left in clumps at roadsides, and the earthbanks
raised to hem in cars, keep everything in place.

The silent hedges, bare and brown-black
long and shallow vale between the hollow hills
and monolith on monolith, alone, but gathered
in a slow, stately procession.

Cardinal, the points among the hills a-ringing valley ways
marked by tumulus and trees, and once, a farmer's wards
Keep off! Private property
but we all know that some would sneak in, after dark
and surreptitiously smoke fags, and proffer cans
and these the worshippers.

The youth are not so much for new-hight-old
there's too much of the secondary school
to bold
and brave
and wild old priests
or witches who fought cops, and bombs
amidst the dawning of Aquarius.

'This place is ours, go get your own!
We earned our every dreadlock, face-line, frown
and sense of false belonging,' thronging, as they say it
but without the words, unless it be to clasp 'the maiden stone' to bosom.
'If you look here,' one enraptured earnestly proclaims,
'This timeless hole through stone enables one to spy the exact point of noonday sun
at holy time.'

Have I the heart to tell her now
that dynamite, and over-zealous archaeology
the barest whit of time gone by
caused this so 'timeless' hole?
I do.
She scowls, and hugs the grey stone tighter, tight
as if it wailed, a bairn all cosy in her stubborn arms.
A dog runs madly up and down a slope
A ball is all his want.
And mine?
The pub, and good, gold mead.
My thirst's for different waters.