The Tops

up a steep and narrow road
reach the tops
wilderness reclaims a verge
of wintery snags
land juts and tilts
hauls out
lays treeless

clumps and hags
pitch up stricken soil
heap above the miry troughs 

loud the heartbeat
nearer to feral thought
then any mouth or ear

swale and quag dawdle
appear to seep listless 
no
every bog tunnels shrouded
to fetch up the feckless

harsh and gorsy
heather treading low
the moors mark nothing
only a head of gnashing wind 
a whipping dinosaurs tail
blear and chill 
bites and grapples

a stone-tusked marl 
crofts under
tangles of un-spun fleece 
in barb and thistle
sheep piss in running rivulets  
thread through
mizzle-pecked rocks 
inscribed
by whatever tortures the air

ravens picket grit edges
wings beating back the below 
primal caws that lift and speak
for the standing stones
their harrowing
lime-cuffed history

before light founders deeper
black anvils appear
in the lowering

a scant anchoring
a bare farrowing
shorn and scoured aloft
by miles of orbiting
beauty

twenty years later
son sends pictures
of moors long traipsed

the sky in my phone howls

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