Hands at Work

Scrape on the river bed

Raise the rocks like you raise the dead

Pick the ground with the axe find the hole

Take out its claws

Clip Devils toenails, shells and barnacles

 Imbue with life ammonites and Brachiopods

Bring them back out of the dark

Lying there mud-bound for millennia quite happily

Read the lie of the land

This slope that dip

Roll up the rocks lift

With your hand

Dig up the turf,

Throw it down

Bore into the bank like a thief for the sand

Use the spade to cut out cubes of stringy

Rooty sodden peat, that is so water logged

You can hardly lift it

Precious, so precious this harboured flesh

Like a surgeon cutting out the Fat of the Land

It takes grit, it takes belief to make a path

A determination to reclaim that little piece of wild

The Path through the Pines

Pine wood pale against brown bark

Wooded blatant without a spark

Dull, latent furry animal warm

Yet like the scales of a reptile

Unmistakably firm

Acidic, acrid needles that hurt

A floor of compass pins

Lost in a haystack

Thorns pin-dropping in the dark

Wait listen and hear the wind

Through them stir

That chandelier rustle

Of glass blades chill shattering

As wraiths in the firs

Wet and waiting soldiers of Mur

Waiting to be roused by one of the three kings

The father leylandii bristling their beards

Then the spirit returns

In convection raising moss and fungal spores in religious

Direction

Until intoxicated the whole Pine forest stirs to listen

The glass wood splits, leaf pins shimmer and shiver their timbers

The holy Ghost of the hill side has breathed

And her sigh is felt overhead

As a guide to the spirit world and the lost traveller

Taking the path through the wood

Lost in translation – the Scottish accent

We broke 900 lights last night

We broke 900 lights

Next month we hope to break the one thousand mark

She said with some pride

I was abhorred – you mean you smashed them all of them?

On your own?

She looked at me quite dazzled

Said “it is as if you are an alien”

I said ‘light bulbs?’ still disbelieving

She said one word “Facebook”

And then, because I still wasn’t getting it - she reiterated more clearly

“I said Likes!”

Cow Hill

The cow jumped over the moon mama

The cow jumped over the moon

I saw it there where the scare crows stare

And the lovers in arms do croon

Upon Cow Hill my dear

The frogs are leaping and the moon is clear

But the heavy heifers are lowing

Their orange manes are blowing

But no cows jump over the moon.

But I swear, I swear mama, mama

That I saw it all the same

What you saw were the Cows on their way back Home

Down the track from where they came

Cow Hill Surrealists

Yeast on risen hills

Wind blown

To unleavened valley floors

The rock cakes, moon rock, bakes

The hot-hearted peoples

Maroon and move

In battle with cattle

They lock horns

Of the army of moos

Down on cow hill

Factories of Aluminium Shields resound in chants

Rio-tinto, Rio-tinto in tribal tones

And tin soldier, drummer boys

Who plough fertile moon fields

That lay in conspicuous towering caravans

And lessen the lassoes from

The wild musket rams