Haworth Moor

 

Haworth Moor

  

Up there on the way to the bleak moor

I can breathe in the heart of the land

and I can see the ruins of the house

 

on the bulk of the hill’s shoulder,

way ahead, way up.

And the house is the goal, but the game is the moor,

 

heather and ling, and fresh north wind,

sphagnum moss and peat bogs.

And it’s cold, but it’s open country like my heart

 

and I can feel clear air in my body

and I can hear her voice

on the wind as it swirls around

 

and calls me up and further up.

Nothing in sight but stone walls following

contours and lone trees spaced along a ridge

 

and I can see the old house

far away, nearly at the top,

and a couple of bent trees to the side

 

… and that voice again, calling;

and the raven too

and I breathe hard as I climb

 

the steep side from the bridge.

And when I reach the house

its tumbledown walls and blank windows

 

look out over the moors and back down to the stream.

I am miles from home

and I can go anywhere from here, be anyone.

 

There is nothing to hold me,

and there is everything. 

Voices that be gone

 Voices that be gone

(after William Barnes)

 

One robin atop red-berried hawthorn

sings farewell to late summer

 

each time I go out into the garden.

Save for him the place is dumb

 

summer birds silent now

no blackbirds or sparrow chatter, no finches or wren.

 

Sometimes a magpie cackles

or a passing gull calls from a distance

 

a skein of geese hoots

through the valley on their way to somewhere else

 

a straggling swallow turns and dives

before it flicks away on the next rise. 

 

A jet fighter sears the air

filling all our space with its roar.

 

We are all silenced. Even the robin.

 

*Lincocut image by Karen Little @kazvina. First published with my poem 'Sparrows' in the anthology 'How Quickly it all Passes', 2024

From west Wales to the West Bank

Palestinian teacher Awdah Hathaleen who contributed to the Oscar-winning documentary 'No Other Land' (2024), was murdered today (July 29th, 2025) during an attack by Israeli settlers in the south Hebron hills.

This short poem was inspired by that film and particularly by Awdah's bravery. Our poems won't stop the horror, and every killing is a tragedy, but it feels this is the moment to share a few words

From my back door to the West Bank

while I walk down to harvest salad leaves

spinach and spring onions

I pass the rambling roses with 1,000 buds

that promise summer scent,

and I eye the red of ripening strawberries.

 

While not so far away

centuries old olive trees are bulldozed,

women wail by their wrecked houses

and men weep over the bleeding bodies

of their brothers

 

and the promise of roses

becomes thorns in my eyes.

 

No Other Land, trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWlx4J8coxU 

 

 

What the brown bear teaches us about grief …

 What the brown bear teaches us about grief …

 (after Clare Shaw)

That it exists all over the world, but not many people ever consider its status.

It is the biggest bear on Earth. In north America it is often called grizzly.

It is rare in some cultures but is not threatened with extinction.

It has an enormous range and is not territorial. It feeds on almost anything.

It will eat sheep and goats and can intimidate wolves.

It lives in dark places, likes to stay in caves, and usually hides from people.

It is nocturnal, but is often active in the day.

It can rage, even when not prompted, and can be extremely aggressive.

It is not predictable and will surely attack if threatened.

It is more likely to attack you if you try to run away.

It is very strong, sometimes five times usual human strength.

It can bite hard, even crush a human head.

It huffs when tense, woofs when alarmed, roars and growls in aggression.

It can be slothful, but will also often climb trees, and walls, terrifyingly fast.

Its colour varies widely from red to dark brown, sometimes almost black.

Its outer coat is not soft, but wiry, and is dense in winter.

It has a massive skull and a large brain, but doesn’t always think straight.

It may have spectacles, but they won’t help it to see more clearly.

It is long lived, maybe 40 years or more in the wild.

If it could speak, it would say that all this is incorrect, because it is big on denial.

And sometimes, sometimes, for no apparent reason,       it     will    dance.

 

*See also Clare Shaw’s, ‘What the goldfish taught me about love’, from their collection, Towards a General Theory of Love. (Bloodaxe 2022)

Image: brown bear, oil on sketch pad, by me.

She is river

This poem was written for a commission in the Love Stories to Nature series by SPANArts, a Pembrokeshire based arts organisation.

A group of four artists got together to create a new multi-media work, which was performed for a very appreciative audience in the Oak Hall, Rhosygilwen.

I was to write a poem on the subject of 'rivers', a composer/musician then wrote a piece of music in response to my poem, a choreographer took the music and created a dance with 12 dancers, and a ceramic artist saw the dance and created new ceramics in response to that. It was done in Chinese Whispers style, so each artist only saw or heard the piece they were to respond to.

When all the pieces were finished we had a 'big reveal' when we all saw each others work in the order in which is was made. Hearing the music for the first time was very moving -- how did all that amazing music come from my poem?

We then had just under two weeks to weave all the pieces together into a performance (see poster below).

Tere were other poets involved too, who were drawn in through the community engagement aspect of the work. The final result was magical! And we hope to perform it again.

Here's the poem I wrote for the project:

She is river

She rises from earth-deep under the Preseli.

Feel how cool is her birth.

Through centuries of peat in a marsh of sphagnum,

weeping from the inner core,

river wells up among heathers and ling.

 

Her bourne trickles and bubbles,

forms bogs, rich and warm.

Taste her home source and there is iron,

scent her keld, her acid origins.

 

Aquamarine with hammered pewter,

she reflects light from mountain tops,

mirrors clouds in mires.

 

She is river This is home.

Fluent, perpetual, streaming

unbroken, ever changing, never ceasing.

 

White water spills and writhes through gorges

under bridges, spumes over falls

surges beneath spring leaves.

Spreading broad and slow under hot summer skies,

her force races and rages after autumn rains.

 

While she flows through farmland,

past factories, industrial estates,

through housing, beside roads, below bridges

she swallows taints and tints of effluents,

takes in all our poisons,

absorbs slurry from fields, sewage overspill from housing estates,

chemical discharges from factories,

and she swallows up our plastic waste.

 

She is river This is her home.

Fluent, perpetual, streaming

unbroken, ever changing, never ceasing.

 

She cannot turn upstream to struggle against currents

as the long-lost salmon swam to birthing pools.

There is no return, so she flows ever down

down she runs for miles and miles until …

she emerges

 

 in havens and estuaries

where gulls wheel and squeal

dolphins leap, autumn seals wail

and the oystercatchers are keening,

where, every day, pleasure-boats buzz

ferries dock, oil and gas tankers come and go

… where curlews call to entreat our silence…

 Listen.

She calls.  She is river.

 

And as we swim in her broad flows,

spread limbs in her eddies –

water like silk on skin –

we will absorb the slicks and slips,

toxic essences, oily licks

that we have poured into her.

 

We will take it all in

Never ceasing, fluent, unbroken, streaming…

streaming home to oceans ...  

She is river.