Valley Town
Streets lineate the hillside,
terrace above the A-road and river.
Houses, built for workers
in whatever line went on
because of the watercourse,
and caused the arterial road,
look down on industry’s
light inheritors of the valley bottom:
carparks, units, retail parks.
Noughties development has improved
on flats put up on the hill
in the sixties: balconies
with better prospects,
wood / glass walkways that bridge the slope.
The cemetery at the end
of the one bisecting lane
is half-way up onto the moor
that keeps the town at bay
and rebuffs by night
mill-shop, golf course, holiday home,
the shadow of the valley; that
is darker than the unpolluted sky.
Helen Boden is a Yorkshire-born, Edinburgh-based writer, educator and editor, with poems in magazines and anthologies including New Writing Scotland, Mslexia, Lighthouse and Butcher’s Dog. She also collaborates with visual artists to make responsive poems and place-specific text.