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 grade gains magnitude.

We slip on scree; vague sheep-tracks maze about

and conquest ever rests a steep slog hence.

The point it levels off, our thrill’s subdued -

the peak’s which pile of rocks?  We’re racked with doubt.

 

Autumn stains the fells and several crows

bespot some rusting larches

clumped upon the lakeward face.

A monstrous buzzard rises up and rows

beyond a speck. We peer into the arches

of a hollowed sheep, green gut-wool splayed 

through ruptured ribs, still smiling in its throes.

 

Two thousand foot below, the glinting town’s

enticingly bedecked in

autumn sunlight but the grim

mesh of larch trees, menacingly brown,

obstructs the plunging slope in that direction.

Sawtooth needles line their thwarting limbs

and we can’t find a path to get back down.