THE RIVER.

Finally, after working on a long walking/writing project all summer (watch this space), here's a new poem for the blog. The river here is, in fact, not one river, but four - where the Derwent and the Ouse combine with the Trent and become the Humber. This area has recently become known as The Humberhead Levels and has attracted a big lottery grant for its conservation. It has an atmosphere that is totally unique.

The River

Full moon;

no clouds or wind.

Odours from the river;

sea-mingled smells

carried on the tide,

thirty miles inland from the coast.

Seaweed, the smell,

and river weed,

between the beds of reed;

banks of mud,

submerged when the tide is high,

where sea and river weed

are left when tides recede. 

Now in the moonlight,

(the fullness of the moon),

the surface of the water shines,

still as ice

until a heron stirs.

While, thirty miles downstream,

the beaches are washed clean

and curious stones are rounded

with every salty surge

and gentle lapping;

slow, insistent slapping,

persistent motion

reducing stones to sand

with which

the sea renews the land.

TWO ROBINS

 



Two Robins

There’s ragged robin flowering in the orchard

And a sleek, fat robin singing overhead;

At his strident instigation

But more by my own inclination,

I spare the flowers from the mower’s blade.

SUNDAY MORNING - 7TH JULY

 



Sunday Morning – 7^th July

Not a single breath of wind

disturbs the slumbering grasses,

standing ramrod straight

or drooping with heads bowed,

along the bristling verge;

no movement wafts the drowsy scent

of creamy meadowsweet and honeysuckle

across the shining lane.

In the over-washed blue sky,

a single misplaced wisp of cloud

is fading from embarrassment,

finding itself alone and open

to the disapproving frown

of the domineering sun. 

Scarcely a sound is heard across the fields,

as if the warming day

has formed a deadening blanket

that creates a depth of silence

broken only by a chaffinch

chattering in a nearby oak

and, in rebuke,

a dolorous rook in reverent black

croaks back a single call. 

It seems as if the whole world holds its breath,

waiting patiently for what?

The hour when the distant peal of minster bells

slips over trees and hedges,

or just in rapt anticipation

of the sultry heat of noon?

 

WHARRAM PERCY (a deserted village).

 

 

WHARRAM PERCY (a deserted village).

 

Roofless,

but more accessible to heaven

than when the pious previously prayed,

a saved-from-crumbling church shell

and weathered letters carved in stone,

are what remains above the ground.

Below, the countless generations

cry out from mouldered mouths

to ask why ancestors do not remember.

 

There are two ways to get here:

 

On a good day,

when the clouds are high

and moved by gentle winds,

from the west you’d come by Thixendale,

up through Cow Wold,

where earthworks tempt the gaze

before the hard-drawn gasps of sea-blown air,

and burning calves and heart at Vessey Hill

bring you to the chalk-strewn ridge.

The way is gentle, then.

Below, the head of Deep Dale

sinks and broadens to a flattened floor;

a spring creates a cloud-strewn pond

and this, in turn, tumbles to a crystal beck.

Here, the solitary church

seems quite incongruous,

for nowhere within sight

is any dwelling left

from which a congregation could be drawn. 

 

The way is easier from the east.

A path made hollow

by the trudging feet of years

and flanked by hawthorn,

still white in June,

and cow parsley and buttercup,

slopes gently down before White Hill,

whose open folds stir

curious, deep-seated memories

that emanate the age of earth.

Here four springs converge

and must be crossed,

for better or for worse,

before the lost, once-welcoming haven

meets the wondering gaze. 

 

How many soles have walked this path?

How many souls have passed

on their last journey to the grave?

Many more than there remain memorials

to mark the dreadful truth

that once men’s lives

were valued less than sheep.

 

 



SALTMARSHE DELPH

 

 

 

Saltmarshe Delph

Sometimes, deep in hidden corners

We discover whole new worlds.

Like here, where the horseshoe river-course

Bends its oozing flow from south to east,

And in its curving grasp the land is flat and wet.

This place exists in quiet insignificance

To all except the myriad of life

That thrives within its few small acres.

But what a life! Nestled here,

Between the railway

And the sprawling, golden fields,

Is a colony that makes its own sufficiency;

On the edge, and yet a world away,

From the cruder works of men

Who pass it, scarcely noticing,

(Except, perhaps, to wryly smile

At the family of swans that walks,

With proprietorial disdain,

Along the centre of the road),

And in quiet co-existence

Maintains a natural diversity

Whose model we could never recreate. 

And yet, by curious paradox, it was born

Where once men tore the earth with brutal might.

Then subtle nature softly healed the scars,

Creating, over time, her own cathedral

From arching willows, bent

To make a glorious vaulted roof,

And, for a floor, the shining mirror-levels

Where miraculous pond striders

Can walk upon the water.

Here blackbirds, dragonflies and warblers

Delight in curling ferns and wild geraniums,

Whilst grebes and cormorants find rest

And food amongst the bordering reeds.

With their very lives they praise

The deity that we have long denied,

For, today, our gods no longer live in trees

Or call us to the stillness of the glades,

But occupy, instead, the sterile spaces

Deep within the gloom of our own minds.

Here’s proof (if proof were needed)

That even the most restless spirit

Doesn’t always have to yearn

For wilder vistas on a grander scale,

But can sometimes be content

With nature in a gentler guise;

A modest Utopia, perhaps, but nonetheless,

Once we have the luck to find them,

It’s these small worlds that often form

The greatest landmarks of our lives.

GIVENDALE

 



Givendale

Along a wrongly-taken road, unexpectedly we found ourselves at Givendale.

Here, in a setting that would make the most obdurate heathen turn to God,

Or, perhaps, recall the long-forgotten whisperings of other, older deities,

A simple, ancient church stands in a corner at the valley head,

Clasped deep within the arms of overhanging trees

And gazing out with narrowed window-eyes across the stretching water

That mirrors clouds onto the valley floor and feeds a trickling beck,

Joined, along its way, by sudden springs from deep within the hills.

 

No grand Cathedral Close or Minster Yard could ever have such power

To impress the eye and, with its beauty, lift the soul to unimagined heights.

Here I was lulled by charm of sun and sense of place

To sit in silence and, perhaps, to wish I could remain forever

And simply feel that life and time had, in this quiet corner,

Slowed down below the speed that we alive can comprehend.

 

Inside the church the stillness deepened more,

As Green Men gazed out from an ancient arch

And a heady scent of hyacinths pervaded the whole air.

I felt that if I never left, I’d be at peace – and almost envied those who lay

Where wood anemones and celandines grow thickly

And blackbirds’ calls are not a dirge or sadly tolling elegy

But celebrate, instead, the living spirit that pervades this place.

 

Then later, as we walked by woodland paths and ate wild garlic with a greedy joy,

The pungent taste affirmed the all-pervading pleasure

That we, on such a day as this, were here and alive.

.

 

 

 

MAY DAY



May Day

Feel it.

The vital life-force bursting from the earth;

surging upwards into plants and beasts

and deep into the loins and breasts

of every man and woman -

unchained, at last, from the emasculating,

iron-binding grip of Winter.

Even the ill-omened blackthorn,

keeper of dark secrets,

has withdrawn her pins of slumber

to become the harbinger of Spring.

In celebration with her sister, May,

she bursts forth with the frothing, fervent,

effervescent foam of life.

 

From every sprouting tree,

the Green Man gazes down,

grizzled, gleeful, grinning,

with lascivious leer and lecherous laugh,

overseer of the ancient rites

of celebration, intoxication, copulation.

From voyeuristic vantage he surveyed

the happenings of ages long before

we became estranged from nature’s ways,

enacted always at this time

underneath the blanket

of oak and ash and thorn.

And he knows that the sap of life

still rises unconstrained and is, as ever,

celebrated on this day.