In The Small Hours: On Thoughts Of Home - 1942
A soldier, thousands of miles from home, imagines his father ploughing Lancashire land with a Clydesdale team.
John Brian Leaver's poem is as natural and everlasting as the scenes it describes.
While rested, out of Alex, west by Apollonia,
listening to the hiss of sand blowing out of old Fazzan,
I saw, in breathless beauty and fast-fading light
the birth of a starlit night
Yet, the better I would be
if only I could see
the gleam of brass on a Clydesdale team
and hear my father's chide
as they strain to cleave a furrow
on the lea of Pendleside
I miss the mix of earth and nettle
after summer rain
and the rain-blanched beam that haunts a lonely bower,
leaving my thoughts to stray, unwontedly,
to my homestead hearth
that ticks away the hour.
