Darren

Visited on a late spring afternoon,
April 2nd, 2026,
as the day leaned gently toward evening
and the fields lay quiet beneath softening light.

A humble two-foot rule
was placed beside the fallen stone,
a small human measure
against a relic of older days.

The stone lies prostrate now,
carried from its first standing place,
set down by unseen hands
far from where it once kept watch.
Six feet in length it rests,
1.3 feet across its weathered face,
and 0.8 feet in depth—
a displaced sentinel,
still holding the memory
of the ground where it once stood.

Cuddesdon Lower Stone
(51.715270733551726, -1.1262380465933124)

First found on a cold December day in 2015,
it lay quiet by the hedgerow,
in the same wide field where once it stood proud—
a silent witness near the shadow
of a war-born decoy from darker times.
Tall as a man, slender as memory,
six feet in height, a foot in breadth,
weathered by wind and watchful time.

I returned in May, a decade on—
the nettled margins thick and high,
too wild to pass with ease.
Across the ditch, in the neighboring field
where the Upper Stone once met the sky,
I glimpsed another:
a broad slab half-buried in the bank,
mute and mossed, holding its secrets still.

I hope to walk those fields again
when autumn’s breath lays down the green,
and take a closer look—
stone to soul.