Windows at Horsehold
Peering through the cracked window panes of the old farm cottage Spider webs, thick dust powdering a single light-bulb held on its old cotton flex Next door a window overlooking the yard displays a notice Eggs for Sale Framed by two ginger cats, tails in the air watching us passing The farmhouse boot scraper positioned outside the stout wooden door Drying mud in the...
Monday 2nd March 2020 2:43 pm
The sound of settling masonry
Dead watershot walls sink into the green and brown land turned spongy by ice and winter rain.
Mortar crumbles, speckling the peaty podsol.
Soil conjoined with tree roots hidden for millennia
Sometimes is revealed by strong Pennine winds exerting force.
Loosened stones occasionally fall to earth
startling the sheltering sheep folded in the ruin.
Shiny quartz pebbles that once defl...
Sunday 21st May 2017 5:16 pm
Stone Circle on Divock Moor
Stone Circle on Divock Moor
Double ring of seventy five stones
Mostly flat set in the banked moor surface
Purpose unknown, lost in the mists of time
Bronze Age man must have gathered at this moot
The eastward view, mountains folded on one another
Fell-sides changing colour with the seasons
Provide a dramatic background
One large stone with no markings, no runes
Cleft wit...
Thursday 10th December 2015 5:29 pm
Summers End Turvin Moor to Cragg Vale
Summer’s End, Turvin Moor to Cragg Vale
The long dry spell affects me
Peat desiccated and dusty taking the shine off my boots
White sand blown and banked at the path sides into small dunes
Quartz scoured from rock outcrops peppers the peat hags
Heather flowers faded from purple to brown husks clinging to clothing
Collon Bobs with ash coloured stems petrified by last winter’s burn
...Thursday 19th November 2015 11:37 am
Picking snails by moonlight
Picking snails by moonlight
Copy moon phases for planting
Waxing and Waning, as tabled in books
Kylo cows caught out by the bright glow
Waned moon now only a sliver, plants slowing down
Gastropods will feed easy tonight after the rain
Moondrops studding dark vegetation
Waxing orb reflects the far off sun producing silver probing light
Catching a further shower
A Moonbow...
Thursday 19th November 2015 11:20 am
Vaccary Walls
Vaccary Walls
Stone lines veining the landscape
Quarried slabs pulled from the earth
Placed upright making a stone fence
Enclosing green fields for Cattle and Sheep
Dividing bog and tussock
Residual hedge trees find purchase for roots
Alongside the rough stones
Where the valley gives way to peat hag and Bilberry
A Buzzard overhead begins a shallow upward spiral
High a...
Thursday 18th June 2015 5:20 pm
Sunken Forests
Sunken Forests
Cardigan Bay, Ceredigion and Turvin Moor, Yorkshire
4000 years ago trees buried in the peat by a changing climate
Oak Pine Alder Willow and Birch stumps linked and lost
Cantre’r Gwaelod in folklore tells of a Welsh Atlantis flooded
Gates were left open drowning the forest, now lost in time
A wild wood forgotten, secrets safe under the sea
The Yorks...
Thursday 29th May 2014 3:33 pm
Poets Pathways
Mostly the surface is hard and stony but often cropped grass softens the step
Paths between hamlets and villages scoured by countless feet over centuries
Inspiring stanzas and outpourings of romantic verse
Passing through a squeaking rusty kissing gate hung with Ivy the way enters a wood
Tarn and Mere flood the valley bottom mirroring the surrounding mountains
Geese shatter the refl...
Monday 19th May 2014 7:08 pm
Over the Edge
Black gritstone Laithe barn facing the watery late afternoon sun
Echoes to the clatter of bovine hooves on shiny dung slicked cobbles
Milking complete, the plod to grazing fields underway accompanied by buzzing flies
Tails flicking, heads shaking, the small herd spreads though the running grass each cow finding space
The field edge drops away into the steep wooded valley patched b...
Friday 22nd November 2013 7:46 pm
Head of Steam Station Bar
Wednesday 16th October 2013 4:39 pm
Damsons at Bilberry Hall SE 077 219
Damsons at Bilberry Hall SE 077 219
Blue velvet drupes with a white dusty bloom hang from scrubby hedge shrub
Germinating from a discarded stone years ago finding a favourable niche
Growing in the Quickthorn marking the edge of cleared moorland along the stony track
Some early ripened have become windfalls eaten by birds and insects on the dusty ground
Dry crazed stones add...
Sunday 29th September 2013 5:29 pm
Walking in the snow
Walking in the snow
Deepest fall since 64
Higher than the road signs
Higher than the walls
Drifts like frozen waves
Drifts we walked Alpine style
Wind sculpted patterns and shapes
Angels against gravity
Silhouetted against the cobalt sky
Bright enough to sear the retina
Meadows blown clear of snow
Grass stalks desiccated and wan
Contrast with drif...
Sunday 29th September 2013 5:27 pm
Hairy Wood Ant
Hairy Wood Ant
Moist cool world outside
Brown and Yellow dome
Inside
Patterned Pine needles tunnelled
By insect community
Heat and Acid
The Rangers Bluebell litmus test
Turns petals from blue to pink
Ant Life
A crowded busy ordered life
A job for life
A short life
Life stubbed out by a tourist foot
To be
Recycled in the woodland hill
...
Friday 9th August 2013 6:35 pm
Lovelocks
Lovelocks
Dawn sunshine over Seville highlights a filigree metal bridge crossing Rio Guadalquiver.
Hot Andalusian sun warms a thousand padlocks clipped to iron each with two names and a love heart.
Scratched and etched with a stylus or a marker pen
Locked and Interlocked to form a Love Chain.
Young love in Spain, the start of things to come.
Lives...
Monday 17th June 2013 6:33 pm
Moor Music
The shrill piping call of the returning Curlew
Contrasting with the lonely peep- peep of Golden Plover
Plaintive note of Peewit carried on the wind from its arching flight
Wading birds reclaiming their share of the corduroy moorland
Nesting sites found on drier ground among ling and crowberry
Ascending notes of Skylark lift the spirit and raise hopes
Honk of Raven ...
Sunday 5th May 2013 2:44 pm
Golden Fibs
Start
Move
Progress
Then advance
Slow down the process
Confidence waning, recession
Seeds
Sprout
Black dark
Into light
Unlocks the gene code
To reproduce the next generation
Bud
Leaf
Unfurls
Catching sun
Photosynthesis produces
The raw materials for growth
Wednesday 3rd April 2013 6:12 pm
Pile of Stones Shackleton Moor
The final passage of man’s impact
Stones won and worked from a gritty rock face
Once made a shelter, a base, a home
Long abandoned and without form
A vegetated hump on the moor edge reveals
Tilted on its clean worked facet
A stone sink in ashlar remains whole
Testimony to lore
Cleanliness’ was next to godliness
In the high lonely Pennines
Thursday 28th March 2013 4:51 pm
Castlerigg Stone Circle
This circle of Lakeland stone megaliths that fell to earth some say
In an open meadow encircled by towering hills
Mute stones bear testimony to the beliefs of its long forgotten builders
Stand and stare in awe
Dance barefoot feeling the ancient vibes
Grass between the toes or brown mud, sometimes snow
Connecting with land, earth and the grey stones
Join hands w...
Tuesday 19th March 2013 5:37 pm
Thirteen Shouting Americans
Kennedy shouted “We do things not because they are easy but because they are hard”
Then they shot him
Martin Luther King shouted “I have a Dream”
Then they shot him
Bob Dylan shouted poems of Love and War
He politicised a whole generation
Timothy Leary shouted “Tune in Turn on and Drop out”
California relaxed
Billy Graham shouted “Come on Down”
Causing many...
Wednesday 6th March 2013 9:08 pm
Watershed This Morning
Watershed this Morning
Hill divided, yellow and grey
Sun and frost, rain and fog
Where is that invisible line?
Crossing the A 58
Now I see the coloured arch
Through prism droplets
Appearing North South on the blacktop
Counties divided by fractured light
Tuesday 5th March 2013 2:37 pm
The Beck Stone
Beck Stone
Rounded lump of grey gritstone now balanced in the beck
Divides rushing stream linking high heather moor to distant sea
A shining silver thread through dale and wold to wide Humber
This same stone, surface scrubbed smooth by falling water
Now releases a stanza carved by a craftswoman from a script written by a poet
Ink to paper
Hammer to chisel
Rock to eye
Wo...
Monday 4th March 2013 5:23 pm
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