I was looking out a train window on my way from Newcastle to Edinburgh and was struck by how the fence rows flashed by almost like a Morse code message. It was telling a story of dozens of neighbouring farmers and their families living side by side beneath the same sky for generations striving to at least survive.
The dashes and dots
Of the tattered windrows
Flashing by my train window
Were like some obscure morse code
The key long lost
In the mists of time
Leaving only a hint
there was ever a message
To decipher from some long ago
lost farmers’ hands.
Of borders drawn peacefully
rooted on both sides
an agreement to
a shared responsibility
To care for the land
to produce and sustain
to provide and succour
A family
A community,
Together yet apart
Divided but whole
And while now frayed
by time and cares
the windrows still spoke
of a simpler, truer, if harder time
when apart together
we lived and loved