Its perspective skewed,
the lie of this land
is all tilts and angles.
Black-thorned hedges
rise in white clouds
to the hilltop farm.
On this Damson Day
it is a damp-mist morning,
the horizon a grey smudge.
Up forest trail and fell-ward,
on the left, a winter-laid hedge,
to the right, a mossy wall.
A riot of new growth lies
at the feet, by the hand:
wild garlic, wilder strawberry,
fresh ferns, and the tiniest violets
hiding on this old path.
Steep steps climb
to a four-acre orchard
primrosed under the pint-sized
trunks of its wiry trees.
There’s the blossom, white as snow.
Hard to imagine
five months hence,
fully plummed and picked,
Bullace and Damascene
driven by the cartload
to Kendal market.
250 tons they’d reckoned
once, taken by train
to the Preston canners.
Nearer home the fruit
was gined and beered,
cheesed and chucknied.
Then into the forest,
a plantation girdled
by a dry stone wall
tall on the moorland edge
where beyond
the grey limestone shards
have broken through what
little grass is left
for absent cattle.
Wild with wind
up here today,
so down to reclaim
the forest’s shelter,
and down through fields
to a farm en fête
all cars and crowds.
This, a damson day of best-judged jam,
with artisan breads, Morris with swords,
fiddling folk, agility dogs, St Kilda sheep,
blue eggs and tents of crafts galore.
In the mist and drizzle
homeward and facing west,
there across the valley lie
outposts of blossoming,
fields embroidered,
and the farms necklaced.
Damson Day is held every April in the Lyth Valley of Cumbria.
