Ash Keys

--Michael Longley

Ghosts of hedgers and ditchers,

The ash trees rattling keys

Above tangles of hawthorn

And bramble, alder and gorse,

Would keep me from pacing

Commonage, long perspectives

And conversations, a field

That touches the horizon.

I am herding cattle there

As a boy, as the old man

Following in his footsteps

Who begins the task again,

As though there’d never been

In some interim or hollow

Wives and children, milk

And buttermilk, market days.

Far from the perimeter

Of watercress and berries,

In the middle of the field

I stand talking to myself,

While the ash keys scatter

And the gates creak open

And the barbed wire rusts

To hay-ropes strung with thorns.