Retreat

Squat and silent, Celtic farms
keep their own counsel;
stand on the hill’s flank
like sentinels.

No Saxon clusters,
village green.
Here, the single hearth
and song unseen.

Silence and isolation;
life is close and thick
as the slow smoke
rising from their stacks.

Planetary farms
skirting the dark moors,
take me aboard, close me
within your habitable silence.

- David Morphet 2002