A visitor
(Arthur Mee’s England: Gloucestershire; 1939)

A book arrived yesterday
- a visitor from the last century
Visiting our modern-times day.

Carries news and views
But no photographs or maps.

Tells us all about
The places
And the faces

Of the people
Who went there.

But most of all of everything
It brings the smoke
Of years gone by -
An incense offering to the gods.

Carrying,  exuding
The scent of fires
Long since out.
Wood smoke smells
Where the words
Were kipperfied
By an ancient fire
Created from old trees
And a woodman’s saw.

A tar-like honey sweet smell
Leaps from the pages
Of timelessness, re-connected,
reconnecting
And helps us picture
Some long gone lord
Or scullery maid
Who built the fire of that distant room.

The lords all smoke
And the ladies withdraw
While the book records
The moments of it all -
Until it lands its 3-d CD sensitivity
In our untimely laps –
To live and breathe the scenes again
Of those new-day early morning times.

The smokey book
Earns its keep for us, thus,
By transmitting more images
Than were ever foreseen
By the writer’s pen
Or the printer’s press.