Poems and Paths: THE HAWTHORN LEAVES ARE YELLOW

Monday 3 December 2012

THE HAWTHORN LEAVES ARE YELLOW

The Hawthorn Leaves Are Yellow

The hawthorn leaves are yellow on the hedge

Where the blackbird sits,

Undisturbed by my passing.

And yet, not unaware of winter’s stealthy tread,

He does not sing.

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About Poems and Paths

‘Poems and Paths’ is a record of my own impressions and perceptions, mostly from walking in the wolds and vales of the East Riding of Yorkshire.

Walking and writing have always strolled along together hand-in-hand, exploring, at one and the same time, the pathways on the ground and the pathways in the mind. It’s an intimate inter-relationship that can rejoice in broad, sunny vistas or creep in trepidation through the shadowlands where one might expect any map to warn: ‘Here Be Dragons’.

Paths are so much more than just connections that join together places. They also connect us directly to the landscape, to the past and the future, to those who have walked there before us and who will follow us and, most importantly, they connect us to our own imaginations and all the thoughts, emotions and half-remembered associations that lie not far below the surface of our consciousness.

The works of all the well- and lesser-known walker/writers bear testimony to this: George Borrow, Richard Jefferies, William Wordsworth, John Clare, Edward Thomas, W H Davies and, more recently, my much-missed friend, Roger Deakin, and the
nature writer, Robert Macfarlane.

As Macfarlane observes, “Paths are the habits of the landscape. They are acts of consensual making….They relate places in a literal sense, and by extension they relate people.”

Edward Thomas believed that paths record the impressions of all who pass along them:

“…heavy is the tread
Of the living: but the dead
Returning lightly dance:

Whatever the road bring
To me or take from me,
They keep me company
With their pattering”

‘Poems and Paths’ is written in the firm belief that, when traversing the pathways of the land and the pathways of the mind, it is always better to travel hopefully than to arrive.