DARK LANE

Today, the trees are gone.
Tall, unlovely elms rooted in the lane
a hundred years or more ago,
to make a giant fence: but no
defence against a modern killer.
One fell with a fearsome crack
two nights after the heart attack
that felled my father.

He would have liked the story
which gave Dark Lane one of its other
names: after the folly
of the cow in thinking she could
graze from one field
to the next. She fell, bellowing.
A less than usual christening
for what was briefly called
Cow Lane.

For me, a boy, Dark Lane
had mystery and magic thrall.
The arthritic tendrils of the tall
trees' roots clung to the high red
banks of sandstone, and offered
makeshift ladders, so we could clamber
up and spy, across the croquet lawn,
our elders playing, drawn
by hoops and colours,
in subtle webs of feeling.
Different tensions shrouding
darker lanes,
or brighter zones.