Damascene

I've been foraging damsons at this ruined upland farm for 20 years.

The last inhabitant died within living memory. His brass-railed bed hung on a few more years, suspended on  rotten floorboards above the sheep and cows sheltering below.

Who the last farming family were seems lost to time although once the place boasted a water wheel*  to power its machinery. It still stands among the crumbling masonry of the walls and buildings.

The damson trees in the once-orchard continue to bear fruit although they too are surrendering to time, their weathered trunks each year a little more twisted and their sinewy limbs frailer. The fruit though is just as sweet and juicy although the reaching of it involves  some awkward clambering  while dodging wasps on the same mission.

The fruit is so ancient that damson stones have been found in Roman and Anglo-Saxon excavations. Did it really originate in Damascus as the name suggests?
 For me it always seems imbued with nostalgia, as in this poem by Owen Sheers, who comes from the same Welsh borderland  as me,  where damsons fruit  wild in the hedges.

It's called My Grandfather's Garden

Where bloodshot apples peered from the grass
 and seed packets taught me the patience
of waiting through a season.
 
Where I cracked the seams of pods,
and fired out peas with a thumbnail
 pushed along the down of the soft inside.
 
 Where he kept order with hoe pods,
at the stems of lettuces, emerging like
 overgrown moth-eaten flowers, colours drained.
 
Where I crouched on the shed’s corrugate roof,
 touching ripe damsons,
 which fell into the lap of my stretched T-shirt.
 
 Where I have come now, a month after his death,
 the house and garden following him out of my life,
 to cut back brambles and pack away tools.
 
Where, entering the hollow socket of the shed,
 I hear damsons tap the roof,
telling me there is no one to catch them

 
* Blipped here, 8 years ago.

Extra: the once-orchard