MIGRATION
From avenues of privet
Guarding tiny squares of lawn
I came to stand, bewildered
In the many-acred corn.
From ordered ruts of tramlines
Under street lamps shining bright
To stumble-footed progress
On a cart track in the night.
To leave my lonely footprints
Through a mile of virgin snow
Instead of searching vainly
In the rush-hour's angry flow.
Remembered aprehension
In a night-time's empty street
Becoming satisfaction
Of a solitude complete.
note: Don was 14 when his family
moved from his birthplace street in industrial
Leicester, out to a lonely farm on Coleorton
Moor,
some 3 miles the other side of Coalville.
Several other poems
point to the contrast between his former
'city' life and going
to live in the countryside.
~ ~ ~