this small lake where only the breeze is present on the water’s surface where only the ducks and moorhens chatter about us silent hills and the shadows of clouds passing passing dark shapes passing over the snow streaks
horses suddenly four dark cobs sturdy travellers’ beasts grazing a golf course gentle souls quietly padding moving close by inspecting us for food I touch a coat black as black as short as the sheep-clipped grass
distance everywhere spreading out into a haze of a lowering sun fold upon fold of field and pasture walled tree-lined disturbed by dwellings grey stone white-walled even red-roofed disappearing into trees nestled next to barns
flow of the hill the hills flow long stretches of stunted grass upwards to nearly snowlines where fissures of white fingers reach down towards the sheeped grass a few tops nearly mountains brilliant white
suddenly finding troubled thoughts are nowhere gone away left somewhere perhaps on the train journey north passing out of the windowed view and now just the present present resting in the cool to breathe cool air
strange that so many images now mind-snapshots conjure past-thoughts sharp memories your blue figure almost motionless sketching with charcoal and finger ends kneeding texture into the paper so still still
the track beyond this farm is an unrolled pattern towards the higher hills across the meadows winter has almost drained of colour to disappear the once green becoming nearly neutral but going further before a surprise in store
a valley revealed after reaching the hill’s brow there a river’s part-song flows across a tree-accompanied edgeland before a sleight village there’s a road one vehicle passing in the half hour you sit and draw
there is colour here autumnal shades though nearly spring the earth sandstone-red bracken fit to be burnt and there very distant a line of smoke following a crease in the southern hills rising and spreading horizon-ward
every time birds crows starlings gulls lift from a field a wood a hillside my heart lifts with them to glide with unexpected joy that this should be so that such movement should make this landscape sing
walking westward sunward into the sun’s setting haze distant Lakeland distant Ullswater somewhere in the gathering purple corrugated sheets of rising hills in the almost empty sky promising a cold night
and later in the warmth of resting as the sky reddens and dusk falls the snowdrop rich woodland from our window captures the westward light and birds roost as we roost on our bed we might not sleep in tonight
but we are to stay and later walking the night-dark road leaving the small town behind the stars bend down to the very edge of nearer horizons the cusp of close fields so sharply bright bold alarums of once-worlds everywhere
to see you sew is to witness peace I often imagine dream of close my eyes to see those quiet fingers press and touch and move so later I bring my own fingers into a play of unclothing to stroke and press and bring close
and morning there is frost fielded to a curve of a pasture edged with what seem to be trees but are distance-belied falsely distant felt too close extraordinary I pull the curtain just a little to gaze that I see it so
my darling there is more and it is more than I know how to place on the page my notes now run to not-quite sense but I discern to be full of walking’s pleasure to grasp a freedom paced together to tread to be under the soft sky still
Appleby-in-Westmoreland is a small market town in the Eden Valley famous for its annual Horse Fair attended each June by over 10,000 travellers from across Europe.