I
In the afternoon
Low cloud a shadow blanket
against the hills, stillness
in a summer landscape but for
insistent sheep,
a railway train,
pigeons conversing
in the tree-laced lane.
Before the conservatory windows
stands the kitchen table
relocated to accommodate
this making, these crafted
objects turned and touched
between her small hands,
between her deft fingers.
II
In wonder
You stopped by the roadside
in wonder at the profusion
of grasses, weeds and flowers,
whelmed over by a confusion
of chaotic design you know
can never be brought entire
to imagination’s mirror.
But surely a corner
of these complex forms,
in a quicksilver moment
you’ll catch – one day.
Until then, hold to this image
in wonder.
III
Whispering
Your beauty catches me
as a breath of wind
against the face
wholly and fulfilling
as your gentle kiss .
I imbibe your stillness here,
as head-pillowed you rest
into sleep in this quiet space,
this unaccustomed place
where coming together
(separate in our thoughts,
apart in our work),
we find ourselves
whispering,
as we meet: to walk
to sit to eat to talk,
as if to undisturb the flow
of measured actions,
determined words.
IV
Patch and Sew
Evening gathers
patch and sew
this woman’s work
bent head
the forearm slightly
raised to hold
a purposeful hand
the needle and its thread
A right leg rests its knee
on the chair’s soft arm
a left-facing shin
foot-firm to the floor
On her lap the garment
she has worn today
she will wear tomorrow
V
Across the Valley
Across the valley
from end to end
a spread of hills
in clouds’ pale shadows.
Above,
their floating forms
of white, of grey
of dusky charcoal dark.
But look,
the sun peeks through
to fall in strips and squares.
The moorland coloured.
Waves of dry-stone walls,
they rise and dive to guard
the foreground pasture-land
where sheep are loud
and cattle uneasy.
Beyond, a wooded belt.
There, a viaduct’s arch.
Here, a limestone kiln
where her figure stoops
to pick up rusty things
off broken ground.
VI
Wild Flowers
Ah Sweet Briar,
my little Vetchling
from the meadow,
but common as Valerian
in a Lady’s Bedstraw.
Wild as Onion,
Black as Knapweed,
sweet this Meadow Buttercup
its great Burnet a Tufted Vetch.
Oh Hedge a tiny Woundwort,
Hedge along a Bedstraw
Crane's Billed in the meadow
that Ox-Eyed eye-oxed Daisy.
VII
Trainspotting
Figures in the field
they stood expectant.
Placed apart
As guns before a drive,
before the beaters
raised the birds,
four men wait for a train.
One braced against a wall,
camera at the ready.
Out of the still afternoon
a heavy breathing monster
displaced the valley air,
the sounds of bleating sheep,
the twitter tweet of moorland birds.
It appeared just for a moment,
revealed itself entire.
Seven carriages red,
the engine green its tender black,
it crossed the Smardale viaduct,
(as if posing for a photograph)
then disappeared from view.
Nicely spotted.
VIII
At 5.0am
To sit in silence
at this early hour
knowing the inevitability
of my desire
to touch
your waking self
warm from sleep.
It is at once so beautiful,
and yet so difficult:
to put such thoughts aside,
when the paragraph begs completion,
when rhyme and rhythm
seek right resolution.
I pause constantly:
to hold myself close
to your imagined cheek,
lightly-freckled
by yesterday’s
sun and wind.
Written over three days in the Upper Eden Valley in sight of Murton Pike and Swindale Edge, Cumbria, UK