Grandfather built this house,
growing from an outcrop of pre-Cambrian rock,
sinuous and organic,
fresh air for his wife’s breathing.
Rooms with five walls,
offset staircase capped with slate,
a window at first floor to let in
children racing down the slope.
His sons, raised in freedom
and not to be outdone, built a fort,
heaved rock from the ground,
slow and painful work for young hands.
Every night, after dark,
Aunt Nell, stern and strait-laced,
slipped out unseen to add a few rocks
of her own, for encouragement.
His grandson lived there longest,
made a garden from the wilderness,
but still the house curves and carves
its natural way through the landscape.
He’s eighty now, that grandson, and standing in the car park.
*Stoneywell Cottage is an Arts and Crafts house in Charnwood Forest,
built 1899 and now owned by The National Trust.
Diane Jackman’s poetry has appeared in Rialto, Spillway, optimum, snakeskin, small press magazines and anthologies. Starting out as a children’s writer with seven books and 100 published stories, she now concentrates on poetry. She has just had a microchap, On the frayed rope of my imagination, published by Origami Poems.
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