Follow the milky path through
Thickets of field rose and briar
Of elder and hawthorn
Bent, yielding to the wind
Watch as the fork tailed kite soars
Weightlessly gliding
Reach out
Here you can almost touch heaven
Flint men carved the dew pond
That rests dry
Sit with them a while
With the ghosts
With the footprints
Carved in the waxen chalk
Crossing with yours
A crown of beech encircles the crest
Legends roll and unroll
Like the swampy mist that unfurls
Enveloping villages below
A place of pagan ritual
Where the devil himself offers
Ladles of hot soup or porridge
A daily pilgrimage
With buckets of water
To tend to your trees
Which now lay decaying
Ghosts
Blooming with black globules
Of pyrophilous fungus
Longing to imbibe a spark
To gestate an ember
Beckoning the spirits
Of Chanctonbury to dance again
To the vibrations that resonate
Under that vast expanse of Sussex sky
