Bronze Age Overlay

A poem by Madhuri

1)

I’m swinging down a country lane
between the rough stone walls
when I meet a woman
with thick blonde bobbed kinetic hair
untangling an electric fence-tape.
She’s my age, plump and friendly,
and tells me of the deer
which got mixed up in the fence
this morning
and had to be cut loose.

About her many holidays in the USA
and the wonders of
every national park
in Arizona.

Then she gestures behind her
to tape marking out
three squares
in a broad and sloping field:
Archaeological digs!
Bronze-works and long-houses,
5,000 years old!
Imagine! The river came up
to there,
and there was a burial ground –
Her son’s drone had found
the shapes of stone
within the grass.
Then, much later, the Romans
had a bridge down there!
Imagine!
And now a housing estate
is being built there
because people don’t care.
And where should she go,
in America,
next time?

Her pudgy dog, all blunt head
and glossy fur
wagged and beamed
with perfect joy
in the morning.

2)

In the afternoon
I went across the street
to the post office.
A young girl stood before me
in the queue:
the most exquisite creature
in living memory –
in a housing estate Morrison’s,
down-at-heel, chilly,
junk-food-ridden! The child –

perhaps sixteen – was slender as a leaf.
A black backless top showed
skin all-of-a-piece
that had never seen sun:
white and graceful and tapered
to a little waist –
then her black bell-bottoms
that said something on the rear
and had flowers embroidered
on the right bell
flowed in perfect accompaniment
down to her little sturdy shoes.

Her dark hair was twisted in a knot
which offset her up-tilt nose
with breathtaking insouciance
and panache –
a messy-bun
of thrillingly right proportion
sticking out back there.

Big hoops in her ears
an extra jewel or two
about the rims –

and a bright, capable air
surrounding her sweetness.

So ‘right’ was she
in every way
I only wanted for her
what housing estates don’t often give:
an opportunity to make art
for all her life.

3)
Overlay

5,000 years ago. This morsel, this
damsel, this divine leaf
of slender brilliance:
how would have been her days?
I can only think
somebody would have got
his hands on her,
and her narrow pelvis
broke
with a baby’s bulging, its elbows,
its big head –

one more teenager
in the burial ground
with or without her babe.

April 2025, Luddendenfoot