Water has always cradled this ancient place,

On each side a river, between which rise

Wooded slopes where lichen-crusted oaks embrace

The wind-bright, buzzard-circling skies.

It has – I don't know – an integrity

Which other words, more prosperous, have lost.

True, the seasons offer "picture-postcard-pretty" –

Winter waking to a fragile conjuring of frost,

In spring the pools of deepening blue on Bradley Hill,

The beech leaves burnished by an autumn sun.

But what is special are the things half-seen, the still

Heart age-old ways conceal, the quiet lives begun

And ended in accordance with the iron and coal

That shaped this land and forged a common soul.

– Claire James, Oldcroft.