Thanks for dropping in.
A few bits and pieces from the archives…

Thousands of smoke-blackened bottle ovens used to fill the skyline of the Potteries, helping to give the city of Stoke-on-Trent its unique character.
​The best of those that remain form the centrepiece of the Gladstone Pottery Museum at Longton, and a number of survivors can be seen in the Normacot Road area nearby.

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​Abandoned

A cottage,
a door forever open wide.
A stillness –
something makes me step inside.
A picture,
faded sepia groom and bride.

A dresser,
letters in a loving hand.
A trophy,
some forgotten marching band.
A photo,
soldiers in a foreign land.

A wireless,
lifeless, on a worn-out wicker chair,
a bookcase,
a Bible and the Book of Common Prayer,
and a hairbrush –
in a veil of silver hair.

A curtain
billows in the soft, unfettered breeze.
A window
frames a scene of verdant summer trees.
A garden –
left behind for butterflies and bees…
​Abandoned.

                                           Bucknall      
 

​Wetley Moor

Here, beneath a shroud of fog,
Lies all that’s left of Wetley Moor.
This frozen footpath, last I trod
Some forty years before.

But this was just The Common then,
An unrestricted open space;
Today, as cul-de-sacs encroach,
It feels a less exclusive place.

Where once they toiled for sand and stone,
Or clawed for coal below the ground,
Now my crackling footsteps make
The icy silence quite profound.

The trig point stands forlorn above
A filled in quarry where we’d play
For hours by a rubbish dump –
There’s nothing much to see today.

Though after half an hour or so
I find myself beside the pond –
And there’s the stile that used to take us
Home by Bluebell Woods beyond.

At last, the morning sun breaks through
As voices float across the moor.
And, for a moment, I’m that boy
Of forty years before.

The market town of Leek grew prosperous in the 18th century with the arrival of the silk-weaving industry and many of the old mills are still standing. The medieval Church of St Edward the Confessor crowns the hilltop in a manner befitting a town called The Queen of the Moorlands.

Skylark

Skylark, in the morning light,
Ascend to some specific height
And tell the world, in sound and sight,
The winter’s passed.

Skylark, yes, you seem to sing
Of all the joy the year could bring.
The sweetest song of early spring
Is here at last.


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           Text, poems and images  ©  JJ Creber  2023