Icky Picky Lane Poem by Martin Ward

Icky Picky Lane
(Monyash, Derbyshire)

I love the name:
Icky Picky Lane.

A Rambling Club
meets here most Sundays
to enjoy the countryside
and each other's company.
Everyone welcome:
proper rambling,
unlike this, but also
just for fun.

Almost -hidden-lanes
sneak out from near
St. Leonard's Church,
to seek out outlying farms
or trace the ghostly tracks
to long-forgotten lead mines.

Finding the vanished places
beneath the wildflowers
or banks of drifted snow:
safer the former for visitors,
but pity the native farmers,
hewn from Derbyshire Stone.

Onward to Parsley Hay,
where walkers and families
ride the route where steam trains
strained and meandered through
this tranquil part of Derbyshire.

Here we find traces
of our DNA remaining
in Derbyshire dialect
or names of places,
taken from the Norse.

Icky Picky Lane:
I know where you
go to, but I wonder
from where you came?