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.