Places of Poetry - Honing Time

Here is my first poem for the wonderful Places of Poetry project where you can read, rate and pin your own poems about places in England & Wales.

This piece - Honing Time was conceived just outside the St Peter & St Paul church at Honing, North Walsham in Norfolk.

Sat in the car, warm
artificial coziness embracing
life worn bones, lovelorn tones
cossetting weak flesh in sleepy summer aroma.

Outside, mini helicopters whirr,
dragonflies zipping back and forth amongst
fields of wheat, ferociously engaged
in a busy ballet, a network of greetings.

Transported through millennia
in the blink of an uncertain eye
by the rogue time machine
that is this Norfolk countryside.

Searching for clues of who I might be –
notice the field, its hand has revealed –
the five of spades caught up in the shape,
the fiery beacon of glimmering trees

alight in the shimmering heat of just gone noon
on this pleasantly barmy august day.
Green olive branches sway gracefully,
long swathes of ecstatic leaves reach

out in all directions, beckoning me
towards their haze fuelled dream.
An aura of whispered secrets glows
translucent, spectrums sing

a multicoloured halo of time
traversing tales, long ago stories
of what might have been, what was
and what may be on its way.

Hypnotised mind fills with memories,
dreams and long forgotten hopes.
In a trance, I am thinking the thoughts of another;
Do I see what she sees too?

How many others have sat in this spot;
how many others have stood in this place;
observed the same view transformed
by the passing years? How long have these trees

watched us, overheard our sighs and
wondrous gasps? How long have they danced
their magic entrancing her and him and I
through glowing portals to other times?

Ask the dragonflies, what have they seen?
They will laugh at our notion, ridiculous
of individual lifetimes. Prehistoric creatures
have seen more than we could ever hope to be.