(An unsent letter form a Roman soldier posted along Hadrian's Wall)
I'm lonely here
the places I didn't go
to defend this place
have given me a headache
for twenty years or so.
The underpinnings in gorse
tiny flowers of thyme
grow through it, these stones
have bled more blood than men
and yet I'm full of hope.
Its willow weaving time,
at Christmas we will decorate:
celebrate Saturnalia, drink
toasts to spill into the new year
hope for a changing of the guard.
The men it posted here
from Syria to Africa
who stood as sentry
through winter's outnumbered days
wish you were here, and here, and here.
Housesteads Fort is a fort built into Hadrian's Wall, the great rampart across the north of England, begun by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 122 AD. For centuries, the wall was the remote northern limit of the Roman Empire.
Housesteads Roman Fort on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, England