This is a poem dedicated to all those who, like me, love walking. I particularly like the freedom that using one’s own physical resources gives, whether it be in country or town on path or road, and I have done so for as long as I can remember. But, of course, this essential freedom has been so important to me over these last few months – having partially deprived of it for years – that it has merited several poems. This one touches on the feeling of history one gets because the act of walking that has been an available means of transport since the human first stood on hind legs.
Paths of History
We who walk by path and lane
Should reflect on the millions who have passed before
When there was no bus, no car no train
Picture the soldiers marching to war
There a man hunched by heavy sack
Here a woman with broken back
When no engines on the roads made roar
And only birds by air could soar
Here we, the so-called modern man
Walk for no purpose except for pleasure
Neither in search of food nor to a deadline plan
Practising an activity for our own leisure
That in the past was the domain of so few
Which, through common wealth, the many now do
As aircraft above leave vapour trails
So vessels of the past used wind and sails
Not long ago, this narrow world seemed vast
Where human feet beside animals stood
While the weary waved, the impatient squeezed past
Those carts propelled by wheels of wood
Transports of delight they were surely not
Yet travellers, then, accepted their lot
Criteria change with time – it’s so strange how
What was normal once is poverty now
Human beings to prosper have always migrated
By day, by night, every month or year
By booted foot or by wheel rotated
Through spatial movement we overcame our fear
Of all that was beyond our bounds
Even foreign tongues and different sounds
We may well wonder how we might now manage
To carry, by hand, our personal baggage
We think ourselves, now, so enlightened
Being educated formally from the age of four
Yet our ancestors were never frightened
To sell their wares from door to door
To talk to strangers that passed them by
They bowed not the head nor avoided the eye
They walked and talked about things unread
Along these paths of history we tread