Three Poems

The Ring Forts

The April fields hold so many
as though some old god had gone crazy
with a round stamp or a giant pastry-cutter.

The scalpel-cut of the new motorway
brings them closer to our speeding minds,
so full of codes, contacts and pin numbers.

How discreet these earth rings are
how quiet, with their sloped green banks,
their muddy, cattle-trod entries,
their enclosures of briars and nettles
and, often, their cool souterrains,
their groves of trees,
their Norman keeps.

Apart from a mention in the annals,
a cadence of a song,
...