Author Information
My Family, My Dead.
High on the moor, the old chapel sits,
Squat, sheltered, in shelter of sorts,
A small fold in the high ridge,
In the Hamlet that bears the same name.
“Forest Chapel.” Three houses and a house of God.
Cowering under the wide, windswept sky of the Pennine chain.
The churchyard’s long sheepgrass and marsh cotton,
Lie flat in the teeth of the west wind.
There old stones moulder in the pale winter sunlight,
Dappled with moss and bright rings of lichen,
Bearing, barely legible, the names of the dead.
Familiar names, names worn with good use,
By hill farmer families with long memories.
Who lived, loved, and died here, in centuries past.
The long dead, whose names survived,
To live on in later generations, later families,
My family, my dead.
