Lent Challenge Week 5

Tuesday April 2nd

Flowers bloom, fade, die,

Pavement art brings joy, then goes,

We must heed the now.

           Thursday April 3^rd          

A road called 'Struggle',

Roman armies pounded it

Their ghosts walk with us.

(in the Lake District)

Friday April 4th

Hills tucked up in cloud,

Trees fade into the gloom, then

Sunlight stabs a field.

Saturday/Sunday April 5th &6^th

            Hardknott           

  (Mediobogdom)

It was a cold posting on

The furthest edge of the Empire.

It lives, like a guilt, in my mind.

I look now at my vineyards,

The turquoise Adriatic, my villa,

Relax with my veteran rewards,

I should be peace,

And yet my spirit keeps returning.

We marched upwards,

From a derelict, deserted shore

Towards the cloud, the high place

Buried in the mountains: Hardknott.

We were a seasoned cohort

Marching second nature,

But the cold, the endless rain

Numbed all desires but to stop.

The camp was lonely,

Perched in the damp, in the shadow

Of the peaks.

Our life lay in stone. Granite.

Cutting, carrying, laying, the road

To make a crossing for our legions

To guard this hideous outpost of Rome.

And yet, we were a body of men

who moved like a drilled chariot team.

We achieved that wretched pass,

Withstood the deluges of infernal rain.

I'm marking time now, sharing military tales

Of a road that will be crumbling now,

Lost to the clouds, the drizzle and the British.

(The legions involved were from the Dalmatia)

Monday April 7th

Wood around graphite,

A pencil is born,

Write of love with it

          Not fear.

Tuesday April 8th

I look down as I climb

Seeing footfall not hills

Lift my eyes and see.