Tapestries

Cut Gate*

Within this amber humour;
filter of our familiarity,

inducing the fraudulent normality
of insinuating streets and raving media,
we seal our hulls against the sucking silence;

to the sound of a stream we bring
the discordant talk of nuclear war,
preserving the balance.

I walk apart and sit
on an iron-tinged pedestal:

oat grass dithers over
ash-white heather stalks
matted in ashy soil I scoop up,
hearing slow intervals of
sheep calls broadcasting,

soil wind-trickling through my hand
to form a palm
and ridges of skeletal fingers.

...............................

*'Cut Gate' s a rising hill ridge on the Pennine moors in South Yorkshire
*Small sections of the moors are burned back rotationally so that the heather is not overwhelmed by gorse and shrubs and birch saplings. The heather grows back fast.