♪♪ "I took my harp to McCarthy's party, but nobody asked me to play" ♪♪


A local poetry group organised an afternoon of music & poetry at a local park today.

There was far too much material for everyone to be included, and this little 'ditty' didn't get an airing, so I offer it for general consumption. Anyone familiar with Calderstones Park, Liverpool?

PS  Explanation, last line, last verse!
    
      Part of Calderstones is a separate garden (Hartshill) where the gardeners perform horticultural miracles to preserve endangered species and the like ..........

Calderstones

So often seen in morning mist, rain-ravaged, silent, secret:

Your bulk brooding, yet half hidden in the dark:

Placed to fulfil some long-forgotten function

Determined exactly

By clerics of a bygone era

Yet now you stand, hip and hap

Ripped from your calculated locations

Tossed, for modern men to ponder upon

No longer set in geometric pattern

But hunkered down, weathered, sandstone-brown

Beyond this "wooden O" there stands an oak

Ancient in lineage, venerable in years

Yet hale and strong: its fruits each year it bears

Acorns such as He Himself once was

When Magna Carta for this town was spoke

A further thought away, a wall beyond:

Calmly, koi carp sun themselves

Beneath the lily pads of a peaceful pond

Where else (you ask) can be found such contrast and diversity

If not here in Liverpool, Capital of Culture's latest city?

A secret garden, silently guarded you may find

Where blossoms rarely found elsewhere are nurtured; kind

Hands and kinder hearts protect them all

From worm and from disease, e'en winter's deathly chill

God bless the gardeners, both here – and at Hartshill!

                                                            _{Paul McDermott August 2008}

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