Garsdale / Dent / Carlisle / Valleraugue 

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I am a lone sparrow on a phone line, the twin feathers of my feathered tail lifting in a soft breeze

I am a ring of metal spikes nailed to a wooden electricity pole

Push down like thorns into the moist hair tender scalp young bone of an irreverent head

I am

A boy, 

I do not know to look up before I climb. 

 

I am a small downy head against a large fleeced side 

Our breathing bellies rise 

And fall and rise and fall 

Stand, shift, push tug nose, my mother turns her head towards you 

And blinks, slowly

 

I am deep yellow piss, spraying out, trickle fan drip, from clumped low-hanging fleece stained black and brown I have been out on this fell 

Since I was seven days old, 

This sodden grass, my bed and my confusion

 

I am the warmth of a young sun, seeping into hide and timber, blade and chalk

I am ground and dark and dark and wet and flattened under sleeping bodies, bovine, ovine, indolent. I hold them all. They see through you.

I wear the decades I have given shelter to herds and fear on my coarse upright surface 

Of plaster laid on heavy and fast, I am stone wall I weep not tears, but mildew

 

I am the reddened epidermis of a fat shoulder 

The flat end of a thick slab 

A red bucket 

A new gate 

A grassy flank

I dip to the south, I am uneven ridges

A furrow, a copse, a bathtub upturned 

Bright white clutches on a branch of holly splintering

 

I am the hindquarters of a weak cow weakened and muddied, I am mud baked into scars, 

By unwanted sunlight, I harden

I am a haze that hides the border 

I filter out ray and view, I come with fume and condensation, I drift, I am Scotland beyond the blue and the sea that you cannot distinguish from the sky and the distance

I pale

I hedge

I expand

Ek is hier ek is hier ek is hier ek is hier ek kan jou sien ek is hier

The light the light the light the light Alan Sparhawk said that on stage and the guy sat in front of you

Did not understand, did not want to listen 

A row of darkened prelate seats rise like charred timbers reaching for the organ pipes which too reach for the expanse of curving cobalt overhead replete with painted stars and plaintive prayer, up and out and over, 

A forest above rooted in air, 

A forest and its arrow lost, 

A soft voice at the tail end of the last verse, 

A tall girl bold and triumphant singing straight out at you, to me, one fist clenched, the other outstretched, pigment floating pale and dry from each and catching the light the light the golden light, 

Standing now beside me, side by side, beside you, belting it out at the top of our lungs 

I see you 

I am here

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