soft larch needles    I sniff wish     thin dangling larch twigs hold
raindrops    christ & pagan wrapped to tinsel    autumn light
has projected Borrowdale’s matter    a work crafts growth    I

peer    at a twig’s knuckles    a needle’s green edge   a tiny globe
dissolving landscape    Borrowdale is a    mass    of details full
a vastness of minuscule    high    resolution beauty    immense

numbers of bits    of leaf-frames pebbles daddylongleg claws
for an instant I spread    let    a moment explode    as I climb
through woods by crags    every detail of me    follicle bone-cell

grease    shatters or slicks    amongst     Borrowdale’s infinite
tiny details    one    of my gasps stretches wetly with the beck
others entwine with white fibres of gills    unravelling    gravity

the calcium atoms of my teeth    jumble     along drystone walls
moss green-gleaming    my meal     of Herdwick meat    passes
through my gut whilst Borrowdale’s    details    digest my soul

..and now I'm awake
though some say not woke
but I'm just a ploughboy
one of those Northern folk,

what do I know about how things
should go
and more to the point
why should I care?

someone out there
yes
and that could be you
would understand
why we do what we do,

in here
it's just me with a hot cup of tea
thinking of chocolate biscuits.

We were flirting with hopes
of a minor disaster
When we entered
the ring
But servants of the public
are like that,
leaving responsibility
To the powers
greater than themselves.

Fate was not long in catching up
anyway,
But first we had
to walk that ring
Through edges
wide and narrow
Dangerous space
and mossy walls
And when
I lifted you down
From the banked
dry stones
By your waist
The thrill
of your beauty
Almost
Snapped my wrists

But you don't believe
in such things
as the power of
old drystone rings
You're a romantic
of a different kind
With power and words
within your mind
But I'm an actor,
and like to play
At being a druid,
if for a day
And the magic of
watching you;
Climb your way
over thousands of years,
That stays with me.
*Even still

This September katydid has found home on shelves in our dining room.

His roommates are books,
a rock stolen from the drystone walls of Yorkshire
fossil fish,
and whatever the trilobites left
    when their passing seemed almost as negligible as their presence.  
Someone should tell him,
as he chirps his nights away
calling,
begging,
wanting.
Love can’t be found among heady books and artifacts
hard and enveloped
Stonily paralyzed by time

Wings may strike against eachother,
legs rub till they’re raw with heat
And that’s not what we call for either
It’s always the afterward
All of our singing in the night is for naught
When we are inevitably left
Alone and transformed into some relic of the past,
or some words someone may have spoken
then thought memorable enough to pen

A memory of melody
As a turning bird song travelling on air
spring to summer to fall
Even the birds stop their call
   only the cricket is left

All of us lying down
singing until our hearts are no longer our hearts.  

The song changes
The desire always remains the same.

the name is wrong the memory still right
of the grey trees beside the drystone wall
fruiting in summer so lush in recall
and seen so clearly in approaching night
as we looked up to see the birds in flight
the setting sun that gorgeous red ball
as into the green sea it seemed to fall
made of it one stark blessing of a sight
we cannot know what goods may come to pass
on this hard journey up and down the hill
but dare not bid a single minute stay
yet what we see reflected in the glass
is not the force either of wit or will
but all the markings of the normal way

An anxious rain invigorates the morning,
sound the burgle!
Autumn's fruit is falling,
like a beat of a drum.
Drystone walls murmurs
their ancient story
over the coppiced lined hills,
where ancient oaks stand stocially
amongst the wistful stars.