Yorkstone, millstone grit,
Rough Rock cut from Bramley Fall.
Carboniferous sandstones topped by
immigrant Portland stone lions
weathered away by time
like the ancient underground
tropical forests crushed
to coal to cast the
fireclay, burned into
redbrick rectangles
to build redbrick
terraced houses
back to back,
tumbling down
cobbled streets
like ridged red waterfalls,
between the woods of Bramley, Middleton,
Roundhay, Horsforth, Ireland Wood, Adel
humming with beech and birch
and hazel and hawthorn
and bramble and berry
like fragments of Elmet
falling gently between the stones
and the streets, washed by rain
peeled open like
the cherry trees in April.
Eileen Neil