REWILDED




My village is in an area once part of Al Andalus, the Moorish kingdom which covered a large part of the Iberian peninsula from the 8th to the 15th century. The remaining Muslim communities were expelled from the Valencia region in the 'Expulsion of the Moriscos' after 1609 leaving emptied villages and devastated communities. The evidence of their presence is still visible in the terraced hillsides and water installations and in the place names and faces of their descendants. This poem was inspired by their history and nature's slow reclamation of the land after people have gone. 


REWILDED


Stone, prised from red earth by 

weathered worn ghost hands,

laboured into walls and homes,

lies forgotten, tumbled like piles 

of tannin soaked sugar cubes.


Mossed into the hill as pines spike 

through floors where children played,

ivy twines over slab lintels as

creeping green invades mans’ space,

nature reclaiming, rewilding.


The echo of a Moorish face peers 

from rock framed wind hole 

over land toiled for generations,

lost to time, like the story of her people,

memories retained in ancient lines of stone.



Comments

  1. Unknown3 August 2018 at 10:59

    Lovely poem..very evocative of time and place...feeling and landscape. Loved it. Thank you

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jacqueline2 December 2018 at 13:59

      Sorry to have missed your comment, thanks for reading!

      Delete

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