Back to the Castle

Hadleigh Castle in an autumnal haze

Ruins

The roofless windows exert

A strange kind of illusion

The archways holding up the sky,

And empty corners in open spaces.

The old curved walls

Like the rotted out trunk of an ancient yew.

Artefacts of functionality

Not ready to be reclaimed

Into the oblivion of the earth.

Still a holdfast for unfeeling ivy,

Imperceptibly dissolving

Beneath surreptitious lichen.

Somewhere for pigeons to shit

And jackdaws to cast a beady eye.

Ross Gardner

Feral Pigeons recalling the cliff-dwelling habits of the ancestral Rock Dove (Columba livia) on the ruins of Hadleigh Castle.