Hayes Street Farm

Is it nostalgia or memory
that guides me to the stables and sheds
rusting machines, the mountains of baled straw?

At the city’s edge is an economy
where chickens can wander freely.
Once, everywhere was like here.

Maybe it’s the stories of my father
that I remember. But I often feel
that I have been here before

fixing up an old tractor
bailing hay with a pitchfork
or picking up windfalls for cider.

I follow a sign to the car boot sale.
These days, one field is a car park
another's harvest are terrible MPs

broken clocks and old crockery.
What pleasures linger in this detritus.
picked over by crows and magpies?

Fringed by hawthorn and elder
a rutted track is drawing me
to the farm pond; its hidden treasure

strangers brought from some wilderness
bright fish, like fragments of sky
lending the dusk their icy brilliance.