Floating out on Windermere

Below the towering fells

Enveloped by the beauty here

And hosts of daffodils

Over the side of the little boat

Oars churn the placid lake

Where unexpected items float

To the Leven and the Crake

They meander through the baby trout

And clog their little gills

Of their origin there can be no doubt

Septic tanks and sewage spills

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The morning sun silvered the poplar leaves

Somewhere others lay in the cut clay 

waiting

And I smelt the sea’s dead things

As I walked. 

Kelp, razor shells, crabs, limpets

School friends swam and laughed in sandy craters

And there I was walking

By Goat's Water, the Old Man looking down

As he had for all my life 

And all those other lives before

The smell of wet bra...

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October 2020

Once we’d bagged the first we should’ve quit

but we are so elated 

to make it safely down by noon 

we press on like a perfect pair of twits,

sights set on a much-alike, elevated

cairn across the valley, reckoning soon 

we’ll add another summit to our list.

We scale a gate which warns us to KEEP OUT!

and brave a barbed wire fence 

before the grad...

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