Walking with Ghosts

Palm Sunday 1461 (Part 1)

Today was cold and heaven had a sombre slate

sagacity about it. As if it knew, not to let the

sunlight gladden the daffodils bloom that lay

sparsely regimented amongst the hedgerows.

The road leading to Darce’s Cross 

wound past the ‘Crooked Billet’ public house

across from which, in a field, stands a medieval chapel,

where used to stand  the village of Lead

a witness to when snow turned red

fitting then, that it rhymes with dead.

The road undulated along, gently down,

gently up, for a about a mile until

I came upon the cross, solitary

in the middle of emptiness, except

for the prickly hug of a Holly bush.

Adorned in Roses, White and Red

and bunches of flowers, no notes,

flowers saying all that needed to be said.

From this sentinel in stone

I looked over fields once of heath,

now ploughed, furrowed and barren, unrevealing

about the dark history that lay beneath.

Along the route of rout I walked

and noted shrivelled empty hearts,

hanging from skeletal briar

like bad memories lingering on

when a skylark arose in soaring sweet song

then stopped in silence…as if something wrong.

For this is Towton Dale

and here, Palm Sunday 1461,

amidst a snowy gale

two vast armies did meet

the reapers scythe,

ready them both to greet.

Fired by vengeance murder and hate

battle was joined for ten long hours

and by the eleventh  28,000 souls

were queued at heavens gate.

In a raging blizzard they say?

Who would have thought that winters

last attack on spring

would help decide the fate of thousands

and who would be King?

on that bloody holy day.

I halted and perused this landscape vast

trying to imagine the horror of that battle past.

When a breeze like breath spoke to my spine

and neck hairs stood rigid, like needles of pine.

I thought I heard the whispered rasping of whetting steel

and the ambiance around me took on an eerie feel.

But the more I looked at that muddied field

the more I began to yield

to the vision that now assaulted my eyes.

Rust brown mud transmuting into rivers

of congealing blood beneath black carrion skies.

P Williams © 2005