The Dales Way

 Squelching slalom of cow pat on the foot path.

Bee, hitching a ride on my back pack to a hay stack off the Dales track, by the river bank.

Sheep moan in a far field as if the long, everlasting grass was a raw deal, poor meal for the pleasant peasants.

Good enough for the ram to be on every gate post or lamb to be on every plate, roast potatoes but not for a barn though.

And so it goes, the ones we need the most, we leave to sew the seeds we take the crops from.

And they're the ones that when it comes to share the load the buck stops short on.  

Mountain Path

Amber, orange & gold
Steamed up windows, damp clothes
Soft & rugged hills
Wrapped up bodies, cold nose
Fill your boots, your heart, your belly
Flood your eyes with many miles
Views long and wild
The mountain path
Hard not to follow
Every winding tangent
A whole menu of delicious food
A cabinet of cake and tea
Which to choose?
Green, brown or grey
Long nights, short stay
Soft & cosy bed
Kestrel, eagle, owl; feathered, fed
Fill your hours, your socks, your mind
Feast on many miles of conversation
Fires open and tired
The mountain path
Hard to climb
Every slippy, stone step
Like life's heartbreaks
A whole word of struggle
Every limb aching, for everyone
Which to lose?
A leg, a neck, a back
Two minuet sun shines through clouds crack
And the sky bawls
Tears rolling down the mountain path
So the sun glows
Through the earth, through the mud
And through the grass
Amber, orange, gold & brass

Heron

Cold, shoulder hunched, pre-historic looking heron sits canal side nurturing her reflection.
Meanwhile white skinned naked ape, somehow from Africa, also cold, shoulder hunched and dressed in grey, sits opposite.
Man, call him Sam, pulls out new age plastic square and takes electronic painting of heron.
"Clearly" he things "she is breaking the 'no fishing' laws.
Heron looks up, stares at man.  "Clearly" she thinks "he is an idiot".

Burns Night

The low, frosty light
Glares through gradients of sky
As I walk between blue tits
Magpies resting high

We all sing together
A cheery, golden song
As if the spring, here forever
Instead of winter long

But hasten thee to think
I wish it to be warm
For I would love nothing more
Than the snow of the Cairngorn

Early, we would rise
My lover and I
Climb the perthshire hills
Until the days we die

Through the dark winter power
The shine of long lived moon
A dram of whisky every hour
To bed from afternoon

We walk to feel the crisp, fresh air
Rosy cheeks and wind swept hair
We walk to see the handsome glen
The tartan kilts of brazen, copper men
We sit to feel the fire trickle down our throats
Taste the vegan haggis made with Scottish oats

So raise a glass...
Not so summer heat or the lightness of spring
But to real highland pete and raven wing

Raise a glass for frost, wind and snow
For red hair, red whisky and the fire's red glow
Like the mountain path raise that glass high for life's twists and turns
Then drink the contents dry for MR ROBBIE BURNS!

Dirty Old Dike

This is the dike that helped me realise.

I sat here and pondered over it for years

before I knew what I was meant to. 

Now I look down and see only leaves

of every shape, size and colour

and think perhaps this truth is not for everyone.

Above me scuttle squirrels on bare branches.

They have no need for a unified philosophy,

they have no need for my opinion.

Maybe this world was created by one God 

- perspective -

For where one sees a golden forest

another sees timbre

Where one sees a stream of knowledge

Another sees a dirty old dike

I’ve reached the top.

Now I look down and see only town.

People of every shape, size and colour

and think perhaps this truth is not for everyone

Above me birds fly.

The afternoon sun dips into cloud.

It has no need for a unified philosophy,

it has no need for my opinion.

It is God,

responsible for turning the forest golden

And then burning the timbre

It is the only reason we have
- perspective -

at all.

The crow caws nuclear wars, black sky forever

Every leaf is a  different shape, size and colour.

We have no need for a unified philosophy

for I see now the sun and moon out together

lighting up the dike.

So I believe it’s day time

But you have said it’s night

Could we just accept that

Both of us are right?

This is the dike that helped me realise

what I was meant to...

That we all live under one roof,

that we all huddle round one fire.

So when we’ve knocked the house down

just to build another

we can all rest assured

we'll all die together. 

City Brick

The bricks are densely packed on top of each other.  They have no room to breath like the sandstone and wood of the country.  Instead they stack in lines forming square corners that three times go back to the queue.  Waiting forever to get nowhere.  Collectively they mimic their original form in giant oblongs that reach to the clouds, only to find that the sky is as cold and wet as the hard ground.  If this urban jungle had a ceiling the whole city would look like a brick.  Before them, in the townships and villages of yesteryear, there were only rocks.  They would fight against being piled up so easily.  Walls on farmland, hundreds of years old, still beam with every character that makes them.  Cottage-oak and barn-timbre breath creative patterns and fine art.  Even stone brick, though still too standardised for the most part, is at least friendly in its sturdiness.  But city bricks, especially those facing centrally, that have never felt proper weather, have no discernable individuality at all.  Each wears the same suit as the rest as far as I can tell.  

Now I cannot blame the bricks for this for as far as I know they cannot make nor lay themselves.  Equally I mustn’t judge the city, for it too was just a few cottages worthy of a public house once.  In fact I see nothing worthy or noble in penance of any sort.  It also has to be said that some suburban architecture that seeps into the city walls can be vastly unique, especially in the steep conformity of the drifting style on many ages - the new cool, which will soon freeze.  Also worth highlighting is that even one of low intelligence can see the hypocrisy in the Yorkshire stone calling the red brick black.  From a distance, indeed, the fields of village Yorkshire or even Cumbria may look even more tarred with the same brush than the flats of London and in some ways the style could benefit from some more imports.  However it is in those hand made raisings, as we may call them (instead of buildings) due to their connectedness to local rock, in which fires roar.  Here 'tis the brick on the highest moor that finds success - not merely the one on the top of the ladder, or the crane as it may be these days.  

I’ve begun to ramble in metaphor you may have noticed.  And ramble I do but not in the city.  Amongst the skyscrapers and tramlines we run.  Forever trying to minimise our journey time yet never actually being anywhere.  Like the towers of Shang Hi we must always be ready to move but never enjoy doing so.  Here in the hills though we are more like the pebbles that slowly tumble down the footpath; they are always still yet have never stopped.  It can be said (despite popular phrasing) that the city always sleeps for in its fast paced anxiety it swallows time.  Like dreams you wake with hazy memories and unaccountable years.  Out in the green hills time will not be rushed.  Sit, we may, for hours with nothing happen.  Here we can live a long life in the true sense.  Every hour of daylight is an hour of genuine time and every hour of night is two with candlelight and whisky.  Hopefully forever I have forgotten the urban jungle ambition for these peaceful village meadows.  Here I lie in the golden stone made with rock rather than the red brick pathed with broken gold.    

Sex Everywhere (Springtime)

Crows tie nots in the air, cawing for each other.
Daffodils stare longingly for the rare bumble bee, yellowing every day.
The house bricks are melding closer together and cars are driving in pairs.
On the bus people sit apart but lean towards one another.
Then in town every advert is provocative.
All the signs spell SEX.
The church spire is particularly erect.
I walk through the tunnel and out the other side.
Even the concrete is bursting with life.
The vehicles in the car park squeeze tightly in their spaces.
The breakfast baguette leaves pleasure on their faces.

Loch it Up

I feel like I'm in a clock
At steady pace equidistant roadside pillars mark time
Each one measuring a moment that i spend marvelling over pine
Fir, oak, rock and river side
Bumps, creases, folds and lines
If only I could keep on walking
For there are so many miles left to roam
The rain falls gently on this page
Yet I am locked in heavy gaze
Feast your eyes on this goes the phrase
But rather than indulging I prefer to graze
Slowly munching every metre and to raise
a glass to the view but only sipping
so as not to get too drunk on its magnificence
Not dazed by the glory and majesty of its vastness
Not phased by its vertigo
Like those giants tumbling from vertical
Oh so vertical and vertical and vertical and vertical and.....
So as to climb to see the tip unless, like those, have tipped buried in the snow or moss
Like if I could sit here long enough
My cheeks frozen to the rock
Legs tangled in the grass
Neck and head depart into the clouds
That steady pace of clock would stop
Every marked moment pop
And finally this illusion of time and space being seperate would drown
In the bottom of the loch

Calder

Gentle water
Meander down the Calder
Soft greens reflected from your surface
As if another world exists below

Sheltered, as I am, from your future
Falling from the sky
I witness droplets altering your flow

Calming river
My foot numb from your hypnosis
Mind blank, sat shielded
On your shaded bank
Ripples twitching evening glow

Nomadic traveller
I wish that you could take me
Peacefully, I'd cherish every moment
Stay with you
Wherever you may go

Craving Horizontal

Feet up, eyes closed
Lent back
Stool on two legs
Propped against the wall

Head loose
One leg crossed over the other
Bum forward, shoulders reclined
A glazed look out the window

New chair
Padded everywhere
An extra lever for optimum comfort
An extra wheel for maximum glide

Central heating turned on full
Electric light killing the darkness
Forest sounds tweeting through the hi fi
Incense burning hairs in your nostrils

These imitations of lying outside in the grass
Will never be as good
As lying outside in the grass.