How gorgeous! Freckle and Mossdog, sorry I didn't make the thread last night, I'd love to have been part of your exchange, some brilliant choices. Instead I was cutting small bits of lino to form illustrations of the Pennines....
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What a weekend - first camping of the year was fantastic and as an added bonus I survived the Edale Skyline :eek:
Woken gently to
sounds of the lone curlew call,
a charm of Goldfinch
graphite covered hands
perusing poetry books
marking favourites
Great choice from the frecklemeister :D That's one of those selections that makes you immediately want to google the Poet's name and works.
The Impossible
Chain-Walk, Kincraig
for Iain
Who knows what we can do? When friends believe
In us, the chrysalis grows tight and splits
And, struggling out, we fly. Your basalt cliffs
Rose up that day like panic. I swallowed hard,
So scared, my two-day migraine slid away.
Yet when I grasped the chains, they were all muscle,
A warmth of linked hands. Then into an hour’s
Hauling, up and over-ing, inching downwards,
Toes socketing home, holdfasts to hand.
An afterwards, next year, that you’ll remember –
Kestrel leaning upon warm cliff-top air,
Nonchalant grasses, and the glittering Forth.
Anna Crowe © 1997
from Skating Out of the House (Peterloo 1997)
Journey's End
When the long day's tramp is over, when the journey's done,
I shall dip down from some hilltop at the going down o' the sun,
And turn in at the open door, and lay down staff and load,
And wash me clean of the heat o' day, and white dust o' the road.
There shall I hear the restless wind go wandering to and fro
That sings the old wayfaring song — the tune that the stars know;
Soft shall I lie and well content, and I shall ask no more
Than just to drowse and watch the folks turn in at the open door.
To hail the folk I used to know, that trudged with me in the dust,
That warmed their hands at the same fire, and ate o' the same crust,
To know them safe from the cold wind and the drenching rain,
Turn a little, and wake a little, and so to sleep again.
Cicely Fox Smith