White Horse Hill
The crack just given to the windscreen
Draws a clean and elegant line
Across the rubble-coated, prehistoric horse
Cut hard against the hill.
So, look in the guide book,
How old is it?
Bronze Age? Iron Age?
However old,
My memories are older.
Anyway, who cares?
Facts are not why I’m here.
My dad broke his leg on the hill:
Did he smell the grass
While waiting for help?
He wouldn't have missed
Such a
Ripe, poetical moment.
A cup on the dashboard
Dwarfs the land,
Steaming the size of a Johnny-Come-Lately Power Station
And the mud’s from my sleeve
When I slipped and swore
And I nudged with my elbow
The white, chalk path
As if to recall
A joke from the past.
And the horse is modern and stylised,
Like the Pagan badge
On the steering wheel hub,
Just half a mile (and thousands of years)
Apart.