a child’s memory in the face of the wind
once it was just me and the wind
both dusting the heather’s sticks
high on the hillside of a hare’s running
the skylark’s deceitful eye falling
then running to the nest of secrecy
the blue sky as wide as my eyes
my flaring and flailing at the right
of speed in the march clouds
as white as snow and the dried grass
curling around the sitting thought
the warm rocks aging gracefully
unaware of me or the time of my life
kilvey hill the blue heather in my veins
the azure smoke of the works below
running down the river as the wind falls
from the beacons high in their late snow
as far as my spinning will take a tale
the five counties visible on a good day
pinion me in the lap of this land
above the sea and the river to the sea
and the streams to the river
and the marsh ponds created by bombs
so long ago the old men’s tales colour this land
as much as a small boy’s imagination wisps
across the going and the coming
and the settling of no argument
as the wind pushes to its inevitable conclusion
that i am higher than the whole wide world
up here on my own at speed
