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