What was it made them
Clamber up the mountain;
Risk their existence;
Mine the greensand?
How did they know
To search the summit,
Hunt the highest
Reaches of the sky?
Where was the value
Of axes chipped and polished;
Roughed out with granite
Knapped to a knife edge?
Who could imagine
Their travels from home,
In curragh or logboat
Fur boot or mule?
How did we discover
This hoard beyond value –
Amongst scree and rockfall
On the edge of the void?
On the Langdale hand axe site
The whipping wind gathered strength,
Armed itself with razor blades,
Sheared off jags of ice and rock
Flaying in the wind,
A cat o’ nine tails, of ruthless erosion.
Buried deep in the snout of this duvet of ice –
Boulders the size of buildings;
Mountain sides snatched from source,
Children from the crib –
The weapons of war; to grind and scrape.
As the ice fled,
Its rearguard wax and wane,
Back to its Corrie-home
Left the boulder-litter
Strewn across the plain –
Coddled in ice,
Smothered by dirt
Waiting to breathe the air again.
With time – collapse;
Warmth returned;
Ice passed;
Rock fell;
Chasms opened –
The land, strewn with pot holes
And pits; craters and fractures;
Water filled; trees rose
A pock-marked land of lakes
A plain of a thousand meres.
High banked, single tracked
Ways cut deep by aeons of steps,
Rutted by planked wheels
Or the constancy of hooves
Crossing the ridge-lines
To market or fair.
Winding, uphill, overtopped
By beech and oak,
Maple and hawthorn,
Rough slabs of dirty, bedded chalk
And mossy stalactites
Where water scarpers…
Leaving a shadowed bed
Of leaves and tilth.
Dappled paths, millennia old,
Connect today with yesterday –
The drover with the rambler,
The herdsman with the hiker,
Tracing or retracing
Paths through time.
Sloshing through the chalk stream
Barefooted; clear waters run shallow
Flint barbs glint; these sward-sharp cobbles
Washed clean of sand; crows circle above
The white cups of crowfoot below.
Where Lower Byrom meets Great John,
Flaked tarmac, shredded by spinning rubber,
Lanc rain and the soles of endless souls,
Reveal sparking setts, peaking once more
At the grey northern sun.
Up on the Needwood plateau,
Long roads, straight as a rule-edge
Dip and climb through ancient forest shards
The Enclosure-roads are tired now
Old granite pavers smile out, remembering
On the posh estate, behind pig-iron gates
Fantails, peacocking like on Continental plazas
Spring forth; not for us, this fancy-dandy –
Spouting like a soda stream –
Just a snicket, toed-in and true.
On the Square though, are the real thing
Fished from streams; dug from fields
Where once the glaciers flowed –
Glassy in the rain, glossy in the dry;
Twisting ankles on their rounded backs.
The light is dimming now –
The sun tearing away
To our dark side; its diurnal doppler,
Just as the ambulance sirens
Scream to nothingness
Down the dual-carriageway
It is then, as our glitterball
Starts its twinkling
That a pack of dancers
Leap into a Quickstep –
Light of foot, gracefully
Tip-tapping through the branches
Bumbarrel, Pudneypoke,
Prinpriddle, Huggen-Muffin –
A tuppence-weighted
Zebra stripe, flashes airily
Waiting for the moment
To shimmy, to feed, to hang
Dog Tail, Long Prod,
Poke Pudding, Feather Poke –
Vortexing whispers
A crowd’s chittering laughter
As the evening warmth
Passes through them
Bottle Bird, Bottle-tit
Bottle Builder, Barrel Tom –
Squeezed together
For shared communion
In a feathered beer jug
Web-built, moss-walled
Nimble Tailor, French Pie,
Oven Bird, Miller’s Thumb –
Huddled in hedgerows
Careening through heaths
The jitterbugging Hedge-Jug –
A long-tailed social network
Gentle valleys, severed from the sea
By the pebble bank
Prominent, like a runner’s spine
Skim-stones at one end
Door chocks, the other;
Going nowhere, yet doomed
Just the same
By the sea roar
Its washes, swashes and crashes –
Its tickles, caresses and claws –
This unrequited love,
Only stopping when the Moon goes
Is silent, distracted,
For that briefest moment.
To the north, the reeds sway like concert-goers
Cylindrical heads, swooning like lighters
In rhythmical hands;
To the south, the fresh water
Skimmed by the breeze,
Wears fluttering white wings –
Wavelets dance like Chiffchaffs or warblers
Hoovering up insects whilst out
For their late evening supper.
On one side of the Ley, gentility & calm
On the other, menace, lurking
The house was one of those that survived.
Years past, most of the village had gone
Washed away, lost, swept up
A besom broom of water and energy and grit
Cast off into the salt-pan of jetsam
And untethered cargo
Right at the street end.
Now the nor’easterly pounded in
The walls shook up from the foundations
Jurassic Park writ real
Our water and wine turned choppy
No salvation it seemed
From the insistent rumble
Incapable of being unheard;
The windows spattered with brine
The walls peppered with shingle
The unending wind
Wailed and whistled ghoulishly
Through seaweed-smeared chimney pots
Kelp flung like phoney confetti –
Outside,
Dogs wore a sideways parting
Owners sported brackish bangs
As they pushed through the car wash
And brushed with the drink;
Seagulls surfed breaker tops
Before banking to vertical
And shrieking desperately as sodden chips
Mushy pea pots and batter crumbs
Went howling down the road – lost
The upended bin nudged by the sea wall
That gyrated, then giggled, then cried
In ecstasy and agony
At such unwanted attention
From our place, the road meanders
River-wards; an oil-slicked snake
Glinting with glass slivers
Under that damned gun-metal sky,
Rock pools of tyre shards
Broken mud flaps, bent hub caps
Go unmoved by any tide.
The land is drowning;
Struggling to lift its head above the flow;
Gasping for air from grass-sward
To tractor-turned till,
It pleads for mercy –
But the waterboarding goes on;
No quarter. No end.
The river runs bank-full;
Soils super-saturated,
Skies soddenly sopping
Triple width, fast flowing
Fields become lakes –
Hillocks become islets –
Kettle holes, an ossuary.
When will it end?
The road now a causeway.
When will it end?
The bridge now a lifeline.
When will it end?
The spirit now eroded…
A barrage, unflinching, resolute.
A golden-threaded arrowhead
Progresses purposefully, advancing –
A clamourous goose skein,
Pulled by its invisible cord, forwards
Forwards; loping; up
And drop, up and drop,
Steady drum beats
Holding them fast in time and space;
Their ancient puppet-master
Corralling an insistent momentum.
A drone-eyed view,
Hovering above and within them
Would see with their eyes –
See their perspective, the
Long waves of magnetic road
Converging on distant horizons
Glowing in their mind-eye –
An addictive ferric aurora.
They can see, yet not see
A far-off tundra-edge
Raked by rasping breath
Off glistening ice mountains;
Behind, a temporal arc
From spring meadows –
The azure promise long gone,
And memories, fading memories,
Beaten into new futures
By honking wings,
Punching their eddies;
Thumping concealed vortices
In crystal clear air;
On, on, unerring.
Ever since I took the name
‘Magpie’, for this
Thing, here,
I’ve been seeing them
Everywhere; saluting them;
Asking of their families;
And their darling children –
Superstition?
No, just continuing
A long line; a tradition,
Of stuff and nonsense.
Still, the magpie
Took on a persona –
Mercurial; mystical;
Imbued with powers
From the Earth, or
Magnetic fields;
Or limbic energies,
Spiritual fluxes
From other worlds;
Realms beyond our knowing…
…And all that.
Until, that was,
Out on my bike
I must have
Disturbed one of them,
Them perishers,
That black & white flash, stalling;
Ramming on his emergency brakes;
Skidding to a halt in front of me
Tyre marks, mid-air;
He was speeding, for sure.
And darting back, guiltily
Into the shadowed blackthorn.
“You’ve dropped your bag“
I mouthed, as the leather
Satchel thing, whatever –
Dropped from his mouth.
But no; it was a baby chick
A blue tit; neck bent
Backwards; closed eyes
Skewiff; all over the shop
Its little legs.
Butchered, by Mr Magpie.
Harvested, for his wife;
Dinner, for his children.
And yet, all I could hear
All I could think of,
At the moment of this crime
Was Chris Packham’s
Snorting, orgasmic laughs –
“Predation.
It is the nature of things“
And with it, spirit energies
Dissolved, met a reality
Head on.
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