Years ago down the lane there was a sheepfold.
What a bustle there was some early some late.
Chaos flock milling, their way not clearly told.
Where was the narrow gate.
The gatekeeper opens it, they swarm in.
But they will only follow their shepherd.
It is his voice that leads them to follow their kin.
Any other they think as dangerous as any leopard.
The sheepfold is gone now.
Only a few rotting pieces of wood remain.
But this thought is resisting time’s steady plough.
There was a good shepherd, he led them down the open lane.
There is in every mind this mental gate.
There is one who can lead us through, with him for salvation we never will be late.

In the midst of the church he opened his mouth.
And clothed himself in a robe of glory.
Was St Athanasius just another dry saint of long ago loyal to his truth?
A fierce opponent of the Arian heresy, long forgotten, a long lost story.
But this is no dry Nicean debate.
Is he just created by his father and no equal?
Did God then not descend to man’s low state?
To God’s power and glory not as one but history’s sequel?
But then man is left to low earthbound estate.
But this I believe God once was we.
Not just One who was and is in unchanging state.
But subsumed in love He gave all for us, his truth to see.
To this champion of your son’s divinity.
We owe our serenity.

Along the Viking Way walkers now wander.
A verdant wold valley soothing all tension.
Nurtured by time’s quiet embrace the path meanders to Caistor.
A dream trickles, ashes wave, views beckon.
But the walker now stumbles across the mine’s remains.
Nettleton Top and Bottom closed tunnel’s opening.
Once two hundred men toiled here under these quiet country lanes.
The iron ore prized out with brute shovel and drill powering.
Fifteen one-ton trucks a day, farm work after the eight hour early shifts.
By 1968 and closure, for grinding labour six pounds a week.
An accident in 1872, deaths at Claxby nearby, the Rev Sumner of Nettleton writes.
That gloomy cavern of disaster, safety improvements I seek.
Now once where the mine railway stood there stirs only a faint memory.
The walker carries on, his mind and his life in another country.

Waking the lane I came across a blue purple five-leafed flower in a cleft so lonely and stony.
Slowly from March through to May subtly changing from deep red.
The delicate flower favouring a home, lane banked fresh and shady.
Common Lungwort Pulmonaria Officinalis, the book said.
But why Pulmonaria, Latin for lung, if you’re oh so clever.
Why lung, this tiny plant used since the Middle Ages to cure coughs and chest diseases.
Well I thought, it’s strange how things so natural can come in so useful, never say never.
After all we hear a lot today of horrible coughs and sneezes.
But why it’s other names, Mary’s tears, Our Lady’s Milk Drops.
Named by Carl Linnaeus after the doctrine of signatures.
The Christian doctor’s belief that a plant looking like a body part could be used as cure mops.
Their belief that God put in plants to guide mankind, medical signatures.
I pass on my way, not tasting a drop of her tears, back to a house lardered with modern pills.
Is Mary crying for us, I ask? Who knows if this medieval thought is any use for life’s ills.

It was a midwinter walk.
I sought the path from Kirmond Le Mire.
I was with my son and we were engrossed in talk.
Suddenly an impenetrable mist came down, my legs began to tire.
Our aim was to head towards Tealby but we had lost all sense of direction.
We crashed through a hedge and found ourselves on an ancient barrow, as if turning a page.
I knew now where I was, by the Neolithic way, all time surrendered by time’s partition.
Here it was if we were standing many thousand years ago in the Bronze Age.
Hard by unseen a lorry thundered along the Caistor High Road.
But long before Rome this was already, above the forest, a path along the ridge of the Wold.
What lies buried beneath time’s feet, pottery, pagan ritual, a chief’s family covered in woad.
Did once from this place did they look far to the West the Pennines, we are not told.
The fog lifted, we set off to the pub, now in mind’s eye a welcome pint we could see.
But there was a chill about my heart, we avoided the lonely path and kept to the B1203.

Worthy is the lamb who was slain,
To receive power and dignity and wisdom.
I am looking across a narrow valley at a flock of sheep, so innocent with no mark of Cain.
They barely move, like white statues, to speech contentedly dumb.
A dog barks, a duck lake bound sings, a distant tractor growls, the wind sighs.
A bumblebee busy about its tasks hovers to the stone’s house cosy crack.
There is a stillness and expectancy all about and no fear-filled cries.
To these creatures there is no past or present, no power or wisdom they need or lack.
Suddenly just before he reached the city there came a light from heaven all around him.
I pray that this light would make us like the lamb content to be still.
We only ask for some small shard of future divinity, some pull from hell’s dark brim.
We do not seek to preach with majestic prose, only our restless pride to kill.
The sheep have not spoken, nor ever will, nor care, nor ever will.
And my mind freed for one instant, now returns to its usual debating, grinding restless mill.