LOOE VALLEY: A NEW POEM ABOUT KIRSTY ELSON'S ARTWORK...

Looe Valley

Margins fenced from the intrusive track,

Where rails upon embedded sleepers rumble

Through what surely was once cultivated

As a garden with poultry scattered about;

Reeds reach from clinging creek mire,

Where a small boat lists, humble,

Awaiting the next passing train to aggravate…

Cottage sits proud, stubborn, taken aback,

Simple, unwilling towards modernity to stumble;

No satellite dish, no telephone line created,

Its sanctity remaining devout;

From the dead, or winter tree, an image dire,

A redundant tyre-swing like on a noose tumbles

And single bench watches time pass and life die, unabated…

Pete Ray

July 2017

The Kirsty Elson piece is really evocative of a time before communication became an essential part of life.

The tracks look like they have intruded, the tyre-swing looks like it rings a death knell for simple country life but the cottage simply remains sedate…