HASTINGS CASTLE

Above the town it looms, timeworn, ruinous.
From the south the ocean devours it's foundations
year upon year, inch by inch.

Yet defiant it stands. A sprawling moss-covered hulk,
repelling the violent storms that threaten to destroy it -
It, a survivor for nine centuries and more!

Touch it's weathered vestiges, feel it's history.
Commune with it. Open your mind and experience it all:
the Hundred Years' War, the Dissolution, the bombs of  World War II.

The gloaming is the best time. Such low light
plays tricks upon the mind. The tourists gone,
now only revenants wander among the gloomy ramparts.

Let yourself dissolve into the silence and through half-closed eyes
glimpse what wasn't there a moment ago.
Distant times, the glint of steel, bodies of the slain

and the castle restored to it's former glory:
a shimmering grey-gold mirage, suspended
in the indigo threads of night.