Time Span

I wandered
Across the hard, monotonous, concrete yard,
Past two modern, indifferent houses
And past their immaculate, boring gardens
Coloured, not by blossoming flowers' colours,
But by litter, or children's toys, new,
But unnoticed while newer ones were free;
Through a gate painted a conspicuous green.
Perhaps, three years ago it would have blended
Into a background of green trees and meadows.
Now only a noisy butcher's van
And the occasional drainpipe were green.
Then I came to a bridge -
Not modern and angled
But old, very old, and delicately blessed with moss
Whose gentle curve was just slightly slippery enough
To catch unawares the well-dressed young man
Who, in a hurry, had chanced the short-cut
Through the uncivilised to civilisation.
Here I stopped, but my thoughts wandered on...

My thoughts wandered
Across a muddy, ever water-logged field,
Past the ancient ruin of an ancient house, waiting,
Waiting to be put out of its agony,
And past its overgrown, yet still bright gardens,
On whose tangled growth no litter dared alight,
Through a gate, broken down yet still a gate -
It kept foes out but let friends in.
Everything was brown or green or shades of these.
Then no man had dared spoil Nature's décor,
Only Nature herself,
Who had made the sky and waters blue.

Then suddenly a new colour had pervaded the scene -
When the sky turned grey
And the waters turned grey,
Bright yellow streaks shot through the sky,
Straight and angled, fast and fierce,
Followed by a noise that rumbled and terrified.
Perhaps Nature had seen into the future
And predicted, only too truly, to man
The angled shapes,
The bright lights,
The noise.
Life,
That was to come,
And to stay.