I am a stranger here.
There are some familiar trees
but they look at me with different eyes
like the Highland cattle who have come from Lincolnshire –
the ginger bullocks with their long curved horns.
I want insects to walk in the tracks
of my wellies as I pick up
my mallet, spade,
hessian mat,
wooden pegs,
cardboard guard
carefully labelled with
an arrow pointing up lest I forget
my sense of direction in the wind and rain.
But they will not trust me for a long while yet
nor will the lapwings, the redwings, the fieldfare…
I want to be more than a cardboard cut-out
just miming and even more so when
I remember the miners –
hard hats, spades,
picks
(when I Google Bickershaw it says more
about the colliery than the village),
sinking shafts to the Plodder seam,
the falling cage and…
I am here planting trees
sometimes overturning a stone
or a piece of coal the chuck chuck chuck
of my mallet a reminder of all the years of hammering
and I am afraid of the absence of the Whistlers
who once upon a time gave a warning.
I am chucking out their memories.
Oh birds return oh birds return!
I believe this rod of willow is stronger
than my prayers and I take faith in knowing
it will outgrow the touch of a stranger.
To be part of making a new wildlife-friendly habitat out of a remnant mine must be a good experience, and your wish to be part of it shapes it prayerfully.
Your reference to the ‘whistlers’ reminded me a a phrase in Welsh – ‘dim gobaith caneri’ (not a canary’s hope), a bit of coal-mining lingo that has survived the mines -and the fate of the canaries – and is embedded in the language.
Here is one i did earlier, published in lancashire life 2013
Bickershaw
by Gerard O’Hanlon, .
Along the Moor to Bickershaw
I walked straight through the Gypsy
camp,
Their Horses white and proud and pure,
Along the moor through Bickershaw.
A vixen stared and glared through me,
As if to gloat that she was free,
Unlike the souls upon the Hill
Behind the bars and wire grille.
I walked adjacent to the line,
Towards the bridge were life once lived
The Broken Bridge from time before,
Besides the Bridge in Bickershaw.
This place of mines – This place of Men,
Where Time neglects their suffering
I swear I heard them call to me,
Their cries as real as real can be,
They plead to be alive once more,
This Ghostly place called Bickershaw.