The walk was long and lonely, the green pasture empty.
I rested by the sign that said there was a Roman villa in this field.
Now all is quiet, not a trace, not one mound has evaded time’s sentry.
No lives, no stories, no distant echoes does it yield.
Was this a Villa Urbana, a retreat from Lindum or a Villa Rustica from civilisation severed?
A simple farmhouse or, my thoughts took flight, I imagined frescoes and toga wearing.
There was a mosaic found here after seventeen hundred years, now with pasture covered.
Under the trace of a ridge from medieval farming after countless years ploughing.
The mosaic was geometric, I’m told, with some blackbirds etched on a fourth century floor.
Did some pagan household God or Nonne Deo speak from a new universal religion.
Did slaves work here, what family tragedies played out, what ancient lore.
Will our own lives lie buried waiting for the trowel of an archaeologist on knowledge’s mission?
Now in rural solitude, I hear only a humming trace of a distant local bound car.
But did once noble carts seek by nearby Fossdyke travel to empire’s far.