What's in a Name? - No.1

National Write a Poem Month is over but I shall go on posting poems each day that I can. I was away for the last few days of NaPoWriMo in April, on a poetry writing course at the Arvon Centre, Totleigh Manor, North Devon, where the rule was, no Internet or mobile phone reception for the duration of the course, which was five nights. It was an experience that taught me a lot. I didn't come home with many finished poems but drafts to work on. 


On the way back, we called in to the village of Week St Mary, just over the Tamar into North Cornwall, to visit my parents' grave in the churchyard there. The gravestone with their names 
engraved on it had been put in place since the last time I'd been there, after the memorial service last year. I wrote this poem about going back to the village as the last piece I produced on the Arvon course.

In Memoriam

Crows fly up from the hedge-top,
A horse stands calm at a stile.
We round the last steep corner
To drive the final mile.

The ghosts of village children
Hide behind the dry-stone wall;
The school house on the corner
Is a pale memorial.

Here are the new build houses
Smug in tight-clipped lawns,
Where lowing cows and tractors
Met on market days at dawn.

Down to the rabbit-eared church
To the graveyard and the stone
And the empty house that echoes
To a past that's dead and gone.

© Janice Windle