on the rails

There was once a race out west
Between the canal diggers
And the railway builders
Cutting the way through fields
Hedges and ancient woods
The blades of spades cutting turf
Building embankments from the spoils
Picks hollowed out the hills for tunnels
Tunnels that would be threaded through
By steel rails, laid on sleepers
That woke sleepy west country folk
Gave them dreams of somewhere else
Towns and cities with regular work
Untied from the red soil
Freed from the gentry
And seasons of toil
As railway builders won
The canal diggers, tied to ponies
Slow steam barges sloughed between the fields and the hedges
Wound their way through the ancient woods
Became meres
Part of the land they once divided

~

CLP. 18/10/2025