Yorkshire November

The painter, John Atkinson Grimshaw was from Leeds and painted scenes from the area round about. Although the setting looks slightly more urban, this one reminds me of Oakwell Hall, an old house next to my primary school and close to the house I grew up in. Atkinson Grimshaw could well have painted it. The setting is splendid, high, looking across at the Pennines.

For the dverse prompt.

Yorkshire November

We’d walk up the lane beneath old trees,
between millstone grit walls,
past low, millstone grit houses,
fields of thin green and dirty sheep,
to the manor house from Elizabeth’s time.

The skies were high there, and the air
sharp with winter on the way,
and November was a time
of frosted leaves and empty gardens.

I remember the colours,
the mossy greens and stone greys,
mullioned windows subsided
with the years, old as cathedrals,
old enough for ghosts of a world
not gone, just waiting behind thick
clouded window glass.

There were rooks in every tree,
and we trod acorn carpets and skies
that stretched for a thousand years.