DECEMBER DAY
Drab
December day,
Wooler
sleepwalks through half-lit dawn.
Alone
in north Northumberland,
silent
beside giggling burn & primed.
The
easy track leads on.
Reastead
revisited
&
bullocks eyeing with suspicion,
Hart
Heugh, stone-strewn & ancient,
drifts
in & out of sight.
Pheasants
shriek at Switcherdown,
a
single tree & tumbled stones.
Little
remains, only a witches ghost.
Cold
Law, head in the clouds,
feet
in the bare winter valley,
a
reluctant, retiring host.
A
red grouse warns, `go-back, back, back`,
but
up past boundary stone to summit cairn,
drenched
to its own skin, sullen.
Carling
Crag, shrouded & mysterious,
dissolves
once seen
&
then to Carey Burn
bristling,
scurrying downstream. Pell-mell.
The
linn, grey, flood-washed rock,
white
beard reminding me
it
is Christmas time.
But,
first, the Hellpath,
tree-lined
& saturated,
strength-sapping
as it angles skywards.
The
sting in the long tail home.
EIGHTY
YEARS ON
(In
memory of W. Ford Robertson)
Wooler,
up with the larks
&
the 9:25 train to Kirknewton
steaming
beneath Yeavering.
Bowmont
seeping into Glendale
&
the sky blossoming with summer.
August,
honey-sweet, brushes past,
the
day still young.
Comfortable
with your long stride,
boots
glide over ancient rocks.
A
bag, packed for the day,
slung
over broad shoulders,
two
yards of strong twine
&
a kettle ready for the boil.
A
stout stick, swings in tune,
a
countryside concerto.
A
grouse breaks cover, startles,
flies
free over Commonburn.
Quiet
on Tom Tallon`s Crag,
clouds
build over Cheviot
&
on over Black Law, Gains Law,
Drythropple
basking in sunlight,
then
Humbleton`s pond, reflective,
&
the village green.
Wooler
waits your whistling return
&
a meal fit for a king.
Eighty
years on
&
I struggle to keep pace.
A cool breeze
and
dappled light over Alwinton,
Coquetdale`s
last,
an
English rose, sleeps on.
A
fox slips behind blackthorn,
snowdrops
break rank
and
daffodils bow their heads.
Songbirds
and
the naked limbs of hawthorn.
Spring
stirs
beneath
hills brushed with snow.
Footsteps
quicken,
Clennell
Street draws breath,
climbs
past Castle Hills
and
Yarnspath Law to Hexpethgate.
Then
down to Cocklawfoot
where
burns collide.
Here
the thistle thrives
and
an old road strikes north.
