Webs

Composed while staying in a converted cattle shed which was tastefully converted. Unfortunately no one had told the spiders we had booked the place for the week!!

Where are the snorting cattle

That browsed in these stalls?

Where are the yokes that

Hung from these walls?

The bellowing bullock,

The goat and the cow,

The long handled spade,

The hoe and the plough?

Or the honest man tilling his sun baked soil

Paying his dues with his sweat and his toil?

Where is the wheat and the winnowing chaff

The sun weathered shepherd

With his lambs and his staff?

Where are the geese, the ducks

And the hens,

The pigs and the goat in their stys and their pens?

Transformed now is all

For the gaupes and the geeks

Over the channel for a couple of weeks.

They’ve come with their sunhats

Lotions and creams

To savour the life of their rustic dreams.

Designer cottage, barn and gite

Transformed by the well-healed-

To their standard they meet.

Barn doors and harrows

For nostalgic effect,

Air-conditioned sleeping and pools

They expect.

They’ll return with their brown skin,

Their idealised eye

Leaving the locals to sweat 'neath the sky.

But there is one link between

The now and the past,

The industrious spider who works just as fast.

He can span the patio, window or ledge

And spread his kingdom from the gite to the hedge.

So although we may change

What was there before,

The spider can spin

Where he spun long ago.

August 2011