Langdale
A
transformation happens,
The lid is lifted from the world
And the land rises up.
Windermere, Wastwater, Derwent Water,
The whole reptilian glory of the fells,
Scafell Pike, Great Gable, Skiddaw,
Pike o’Stickle like a leviathan
Rising from the flood of Langdale.
The palm that cups Sprinkling Tarn
Raises us up onto Great End’s Band.
On this titled ridge
Our hands grip rocks.
Immy, the Mountain Gazelle,
Pushes her boots down on her apprehension.
‘You might call it “exciting”,’ she says before,
And adds afterwards, ‘I prefer it flat.’
Matt grips his own fear,
Finding distraction in others,
No pack on his back
Having served his time as Sherpa for the boys.
Great End, Esk Hause, Esk Pike
And then, like a gift, the summit of Bow Fell
Is all mine.
With an act of generosity, of grace,
The great unsettled stones
Convey me to the top,
Familiar ground blanketed beneath me
Under a sunny sky.
Evan empties Skittles into his mouth
And Erica finds another bottle of water
In her bottomless pack.
Dehydrated Coxy is dreaming of Primavera
But the only beat is the bassline
Of his pounding heart,
The only dancing his old man shuffle.
Another Band leads us down
To the Old Dungeon Ghyll.
Dave’s knees have gone.
I’m jogging.
As I walk back into camp I hear,
‘Hello Phil,’ from the twinned voices
Of Ailsa and Evelyn in the stream
And I float back on the warmth of that welcome.
The
Obstacle
The
obstacle is not in the way,
The ridge is not impassable,
The summit is not unreachable,
The snow is not an abyss.
My wilful steps take me onwards,
This path I have made for myself,
A ragged pattern of peaks and gullies
Tracing a line on the graph,
A line on the map, a distortion of hills.
My heart’s insistent motor whirs on.
‘Auscultation of the heart revealed
A soft murmur in the aortic area.’
It murmurs as I cross the ridge,
Climb the rake,
Pass the chockstone that is
Lodged in the artery of rock.
The obstacle is not in the way,
The obstacle is the way.
Shipshape
(Gunvor 1912)
Two
tall mainmasts spearing the grey sky,
The topsails furled, drawing black crucifixes
Against the vanishing ocean.
The other sails are square and true,
Though shaded darkly –
Washing drying on a sooty day.
The fore-and-aft sails are perfect triangles of white
Tethering the mainsails to the prow.
A full rig that could drive the barque around the world,
Through storms round the Cape,
Through dark nights in Biscay,
Over mammoth graveyards in the German Sea.
A strong ship faring forwards strongly,
As if the ocean were endless
And sailing were just a matter of belief.
There is no ending if you keep on going
With a breathless wind to fill your sails.
Only an end has come,
The angle of the masts is all wrong,
They cant to one side
And the decks are awash
As wild white waves foam over them.
The ship is perfect but for the sea crushing it against the rocks.
It has heaved half up, stoved in.
The men who drove it forwards have all left.
Their perfect ship, holed below the waterline,
Drowned, wrecked, no more use in the world.
What seemed perfection was flawed all along
And in a moment, all that seemed endless is gone.
Grace works this way too,
Lives spared for the loss of something else –
Possibility, potential, calm sailing
Through untroubled seas.
A ship with a foetid cargo shattered against rocks.
