High Wood

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 t

heir battle finally over

The rolling trembling thunder rides the ridge of Bazentin

Detonations scatter clouds of crows

The treeline 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