Hallowe'en

Autumn becomes the Howgills. This is Smardale.

 And this is a very dog-like sheep.

And this a very dead one.

Birthday Break

Bags are packed, a stack of books, a stash of food and drink, a pen filled with ink and two notebooks (poetry and non-poetry), camera, six kinds of footwear, woolly hats, gloves, scarves. Only going to the Howgills and only for four days, but one likes to be well-equipped. There's a wood burner in our cottage so all will be well.

Who's Gonna Hold My Heart?

Been driving around for four years listening to this album. It's kind of my private soundtrack.

 

Decision

Building up to the birthday and on holiday now for 10 days. The colours of the leaves are so strong this year they seem at times to generate light, especially in the mist - was it the wet summer? I stand and stare at long orange grasses, pink yellow and green willow herb, deep red-chestnut-brown there is no word for in the trees down in the valley of Hebden Water amongst the more familiar yellow, gold and fading green. I feel them in my chest, breathe them in in in.

Happy-sad-happy-sad-happy-sad. So happy and so sad. The past is gone gone gone. There is only now, and the old selves I carry with me need me to love them, really really love them, along with my now self. Love them and tell them that it can be different now. But that is up to me and nobody else. Day by day I am making this decision.

West Yorkshire Today

The day was perfectly still, perfectly clear, the light bright gold. The colours of the trees, of the willow herb, of the bilberry, of the grasses on the tops, a palette of gold, ochre, mustard and peach. Mud still sucking the welly-booted foot in a dark porridge. Stone dry, grey, green with mosses and lichens. Distant sheep small pale shapes against green. Wind turbines motionless. A robin singing on a high branch.

I Love Poetry Workshops

So, today, a masterclass with Moniza Alvi at the Ilkley Literature Festival on the theme of the adventure of poetry. Intense two hours full of leaps and excitement.

This is not from the class, but afterwards.

It begins to rain and a little wind
lifts the clematis and the rose
on the wall as if to see what's underneath,
turns the brave October flower's face to the stones
and holds it there like a shirt turned inside out
on a bouncing washing line.

Quietly, small drips of rain splash lengths
of wet down the window at an angle of
maybe forty-five degrees.

Protractors and set squares with broken points
in a grubby pencil case,
on long afternoons when life seemed shut out
behind tall windows
you could only open with a hook on a pole,
when rain ran straight down in parallel lines
and the wind howled in the green downpipe
on the wall outside the classroom.

Years of that - sitting on hard square chairs
at ink-stained desks with heavy lids, watching
the weather, watching the clock, watching the white-shirted
back of the girl in front, watching a teacher in tweed
with chalky fingers, watching
and wondering how this and the future joined up.

Day Is Done