Right in the moment
The coltsfoot are
out on the bank above the beach
below the newly dug
rabbit hole. Lords and ladies
(cuckoo pint,
jack-in-the-pulpit) grow beside celandines
and, along the road
at Bardsea, Roy’s Ices doing a
roaring trade with
bikers and parents, grandparents,
children playing in
this bitter Easter Monday wind.
Across the bay I
imagine I smell smoke from flames
burning hillsides
of gorse and heather, new growth
soon sprouting,
smoke rising above Heysham power station.
Today I’m
collecting small pieces of smoothed slate
for my niece to
carve her rune stones. She tells me:
‘Did you know that
flint axes found at the Neolithic
axe factory Pike o’
Stickle were smoothed on sandstone rocks
St. Bees?” Polished greenstone volcanic tuff.
I’m catapulted back in time when forbears crossed
the fells over
Wrynose Pass, dropped down to the Duddon
headwaters
that have their source at
Great Moss. Up they sweep, wrapped in
what? Bearskins? Wolf? To
scramble up to Hardknott way way before
Romans trod these fells, or miners
naming paths ‘Moses Trod’ –
did these Neolithic men and women hug
their children to them, clutching
too, their precious axes, rough until
they met the rougher sandstone
rocks at Fleswick Bay where Wordsworth
fell asleep, dreamed
an open book and lamp, dreamed of Arabic
lettering, dreamed
as I am now this moment, drowsing in the
hum of computer, recalling
the low thrum of off road bikes drumming
up and down the beach;
people licking ice creams, watching the
sea come in. I drive home,
small darts of yellow suns pinprick my
retina, coltsfoot growing.
Lovely...
ReplyDeletethank you!
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