DIVERSIONS
Two sets of works on local busy A roads
on the same day, morning and afternoon,
diverted me down lanes I had not travelled
for decades: eastwards to Beeston Castle
on its sandstone rock, westwards to Essar’s
refinery on the Mersey marshes;
spring lanes edged with cow parsley, and banked
with hawthorn hedges flowering; Friesians
glimpsed through a gate, a ploughed field’s furrows
the turned colour of mahogany;
through Saxon settlements – Foulk Stapelford
and Hargrave, Picton Gorse and Little Stanney,
Hoofield and Wervin – as if the Romans
had never come, and the Normans never would;
from doomsday parish to doomsday parish;
sunlight shifting, seasons unfolding,
the past almost within grasp.
Alex Cox
January 30, 2026Doomsday? Aaiiee. Maybe the alt. spelling would be more in keeping with this encouraging poem.
Mary Clark
February 3, 2026That sense of being in another time the countryside can convey captured so well in this poem, ‘as if the Romans/ had never come, and the Normans never would’.
David Press
March 4, 2026Cycling or driving these lanes, I often enjoy the possibility that what I’m looking at might be little changed from centuries past. Your poem captures that beautifully. I love the ending ‘the past almost within grasp’.