Shared Landscapes

Leaf 311 – Art Inspired

 

Alexandra Buckle - Woodland Edge (2020)

This poem was inspired by one of Alexandra Buckle’s prints, ‘Woodland Edge’ (2020), which very closely matches a view found on a scenic walk in the locale around my hometown on the edge of London. It’s a route which in recent years I have walked several times with my mother. On that walk – through woodland dells, down main streets and back lanes, up footbridges over railway lines, along footpaths, through parks and beside the local river which gives its name to our town – each of us shared our memories of growing up there, roaming the woods and fields thereabouts. I have always been interested in the local history of the place where I grew up. When I was a child at school, our teachers took us on a walk through the town and taught us all about the various architectural styles of buildings from different eras, from the modern back to the Elizabethan and even the medieval. Having originally been a rural village which was subsequently subsumed into London’s “Metroland” it has retained a countryside feel, and even has one working farm still. Now that I am grown up, I’ve begun to explore the town with my own family history more in mind – quizzing my mother about the places which connect us and sharing memories that link us together: me, her, my grandparents, and my great grandparents. Continuing a kind of anecdotal relay, wherein the baton of our lived past is passed down; a baton forged through time and place, a baton which has brazed those elements together to make us who we are – because family is home, and home is family. This is something which I hope the following poem manages to capture and encapsulate with far fewer words, but (hopefully) with a much deeper sense of feeling.

 

 

On a walk through

the landscape of

our childhoods –

 

my mother and me.