Miller’s Dale
Sitting above Miller’s Dale
I lie back on the grass,
Sunshine warming my face.
Jackdaws, crows and songbirds call.
Below me, the Wye shushes over weirs,
The wind gentle rustles through trees
And somewhere, far away on the trail,
A child shrieks.
Insects buzz around the air
And land on me.
I lie still, connected,
Root and crown, to the ground.
My fingers twine around the living grass,
As though its slender blades
Might bind me to the hill
And drag me down into
The holy earth that holds me up.
I imagine my body
Dissolving into the landscape
And when I disappear,
I’m not lost, but happy and at home,
Held there in the welcoming soil.
Never let me leave.
Pheriche/Stonethwaite
Dry and cold beneath the mountains,
The only water a trickle like a leak
Running down the middle of the street,
If street this is.
Only a rough stone wall
Separates this stony path
From the scrub of sea buckthorn,
Red like blood
Drawn by the thorns
That swell to orange blooms
Full of sour juice.
Houses emerge from the stones,
Stone roofs held squat by the mountains’ weight,
Windows dark and shaded from the clear sky
Into whose blue the mountains bite.
My energy drains into the dry land,
The cold air winnows my spirit.
An alien country walls me in
And makes me think of home.
*
Into a green world,
Green of the in-by fields,
Green of the thorns by the beck,
Green of the woods of oak, ash, birch and rowan,
Green of the fells, peppered by rocks
Sheltering juniper from sheep,
Rocks surging out like breakers in a sea of bracken.
In the valley stand solid, squat farmhouses,
Whitewashed walls and deep stone porches,
A thrawn rebuff to Cumbrian weather.
Stone walls maze the fields,
Keeping sheep from sheep,
Sheep from the cars cramming the roads.
And above, the hills merge softly into blue,
Where there is air and light
Among the crags
Where life breathes.
Lathkill Dale
Lathkill Dale depths
In the brightness of spring
And the company of birds.
The white-bibbed hum of a dipper
Drawing a line along the river,
Like a loosened arrow.
Troglodyte jackdaws
Chattering their names
From limestone cliffs.
Parti-coloured wagtails,
Egg yolk and ash,
Flagging their beauty.
Slow magic transmutes my inwardness.
The world is wildly alive
And full of things being said.
Rest. Breathe. Attend.
Meditating on a mossy rock
Above the path, away from the few people,
I listen to what the river tries to tell me.
That water washes away tears?
That all things pass?
To flow, to flow.
