Heptonstall Path Poem by C Richard Miles

Beech, birch and sycamore and ash
Still stretch each straggly bent-back branch
Across the shadowed sunken path
That scrambles up the steep-slant bank.

Between the oak and hazel beams is seen,
Entangled with the bracken, grass
Through which sharp-tangled brambles, green
And not yet black with berry, pass.

Rank nettles and coarse goose-grass, all
Can mask the rutted track that scales
The dale-side hill to Heptonstall
Between the rust-clad hand-grasped rails.

But there are some that still recall
This hidden, near-forgotten track
When shattered lads and lasses crawled
Home from their toil, all soiled and black.

By moss-frocked flagstone wall, it still
Climbs up rough cobbled hand-hewn setts,
Which clogs that clattered home from mills
Have sanded shiny-smooth with steps.

But, up that track, now tourists tread
To catch the views and walk their dogs.
Yet will the path remember them
As well as those who trod in clogs?