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Walking on the moor
This landscape is wrong. Hills fold, fields reach,
hedges close, yet all are flat, all are undefined.
Faded photos have more life.
As years of wasting in the cupboard drawer
leach tone and brightness from albumed memories
so long-strophed winter has bleached the leaves
in its onward pass, leaving wasteland in its trail.
Today sunshine fails the moor. The season
is on the cusp. One singer departs before
the next comes in sight. The chorus, faceless, is silent.
The shadows are gone. The shadows are gone,
and their absence robs the land of distance. Aerial
perspective, haze enforced, is all the help there is.
The path untrod reaches to a soft focused end
and the hills conceal an uncertain journey.
Somerset 1998
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