High Wood - Fish

Chill, break of day

A light frost thawing

Sun, pale and grey

A spectral morning

Tractors crawl, horsepower straining

Carve the earth, the ploughshares turning

The sod that hides where dead men lie

The lost and fallen of wars gone by

Gathering the iron harvest

Reminders of their bloody madness

Whose bones in furrows sometimes rise

To plead to be identified

To join the ranks of comrade soldiers

Buried beneath the bleached, white crosses

Names and numbers cut in stone

The regiment they called their home

The age they reached, the day they died

Their memory is all that does survive

In tended graves they rest in peace

Their battle finally over

The rolling, trembling thunder

Rides the ridge of Bazentin

Detonations scatter clouds of crows

The tree line offers refuge

To the wide-eyed, startled deer

Launch, plunging through the bracken

They head into the shadows

Of the High Wood

The oaks majestic, standing proud and tall

Holding their position on a landscape lost in time

The roots dug in the sore contested ground

The gnarled and twisted timbers betray the battle scars of yore

The wood will rise, the wood will fall, the circle is unbroken

The wounds will heal in rings of time, the circle is unbroken

Half buried in the forest floor decay

Broken, rusting weaponry beneath the fallen leaves

The shells that failed still hold their deadly load

Dormant in the undergrowth, their promise only stalled

The wood will rise, the wood will fall, the circle is unbroken

The wounds will heal in rings of time, the circle is unbroken

The wood will rise, the wood will fall, the circle is unbroken

The wounds will heal in rings of time, the circle is unbroken

In the darkness of the High Wood

It’s so dense I can hardly breathe

A stark and muffled silence

I stand alone amongst the trees

Are they ghosts or moving shadows?

Are they spirits gone before?

Are these the restless souls still wandering

The ones that were forsaken

In the High Wood?