CASTLES FULL OF SWIFTS

travelling about: for MMM.

You told me about castelles full of swifts.

 We followed-up by googling if they actually have legs at all

- or just vestigial stumps;

by verifying if the ground-plan

was fengshuily-wise

or merely a defensive citadel against invading heathens;

just a pile of stone on top of an ancient druid site.

Off the regular tourist trail, needing no Visitors Centre, 

 one may also come across 

tiny chapels, still workable with gas lighting,

only accessible by chance or

by climbing through a hedge

into a jumble of headstones lapsing knee-deep in ivy,

with the whiff of badger or fox.

It’s a magical, Merlin-ish world

outside our own front door, 

down the everyday road.

 An overgrown lane mysteriously leading nowhere - a ridge or hump in a field:

a story or sense of being seen where robins once frequented

and hemlock grows;

broken arches, weathed stone walling

and sunken traces of man or beast

grooved archaicly in the land.

Once glaciers slid,

crumbling and grinding the valleys,

smoothing mountain peaks

to the soft haunches of today:

watery reservoirs of bog and peat

 - if techno-man could let be, allow.