High Wood Fish (Rock)

Chill, break of day
A light frost thawing
Sun, pale and grey
A spectral morning

Tractors crawl, horsepower straining
Carve the earth, the ploughshares turning
The sod that hides where dead men lie
The lost and fallen of wars gone by
Gathering the iron harvest
Reminders of their bloody madness
Whose bones in furrows sometimes rise
To plead to be identified

To join the ranks of comrade soldiers
Buried beneath the bleached, white crosses
Names and numbers cut in stone
The regiment they called their home
The age they reached, the day they died
Their memory is all that does survive
In tended graves they rest in peace
Their battle finally over

The rolling, trembling thunder
Rides the ridge of Bazentin
Detonations scatter clouds of crows
The tree line offers refuge
To the wide-eyed, startled deer
Launch, plunging through the bracken
They head into the shadows
Of the High Wood