Because we sat on the bridge and we’ll die

Because the spring after each of our deaths
will lead to a summer of the same
beauty as this

Because in the face of the running water
and the bridge serving centuries
I salute the flag of my love

It is waving there still

The ways – clockwise or anti? Tradition
dictates anti. The times? The times are lost
like Fleetwith Pike in cloud so cloudy it’s more
like a representation of itself.
But why the need to count? When here I feel
as ageless as the water, the shore, the tales
illustrating themselves in the spaces between
the trees of Burtness Wood. But Peggy’s Bridge,
that cluster of firs in Warnscale Bottom –
they remind me to imagine myself
in a Caspar Friedrich – a parody
of the first time years ago. It’s half past
the hour at the too cheerily named bridge,
but oils take time and it’s hard to get me to budge.

I love to see the symbols on the map –
the cross, the less-than-4-metres-wide road,
the pub (named even). And I love
to see us as symbols and everything
we saw: the two men
chess-playing at Skelwith Fold
in back-porch sunshine, mark it
with a T for tranquillity. Put a P
in the graveyard for picnic (teabread,
coffee). And A just there on the verge
for sapling (ash) – how much growth
that summer? And the bend in the road
a double S for smiles (the greengold
light, the veneer of wood-water,
the tilt). And a capital J for summer
(joy), and a D for don’t
(let this end), and a G and T left behind
at the pub (empty), and a capital U
for God saying I and the entire
universe wish this walk well.
By the Brathay and the underwater
bubbles that began us, an M
for completion by moonlight.
And all over, write, in full:
The Dazzle of this World.

I wrote nothing of summer, high or late,
nothing of the kingfisher I saw fishing
on the pooled river Irt, nothing of the loosestrife
and downy oat-grass I lay in while I watched;
and that was the easy part, the flashy
feathers of morning, the sheep in neat circles
of shade beneath the oaks. I’d left my car
in Nether Wasdale then walked to Strangends,
Foxbield Wood, crossed the river at Hollins,
then Santon Bridge, through Mecklin Wood, skirted
Latterbarrow, then down to Forest Bridge.
At Cinderdale I should have found damp dusk,
should have found the cinders of the day.
But at the triangular crossroads, a place
steeped in human pause, something palpable
as the heat from a coal fire in winter blazed
in my face. The highest reaches of the beech –
six trees close packed – were flame and they were water.
The green sun, the red cattle, the blue-faced sheep:
everything primary-bright, solid, and yet
see-through. For a long while as I looked
into the heart of the valley, the silence,
I could only think that it was life
or death I was being shown. But as I write,
I see it was continuance, or to use a word
as poetic as Cinderdale – ceaselessness.

Take the path from Ulpha
to Millbrow when it plays host
to yellow. Then define the colour
of the trees, their bark, a colour
as seasonal as the daffodil,
as peculiar to the end of winter –
an animal grey, startled.

If we feel a chill each year
on the day we will die,
does the involuntary nod

I perform here – this oblique
junction complicated further
by the church road forking –

signal back to a lost memory?
Did we once turn off the B road
onto this less-than-four-metres-wide road,

and did we pause here, my father,
long after the non-existent traffic
had sailed past?

I brake, I reverse, I rest
on the wrought-iron seat,
high and low equidistant.

Poems on the Naming of Places: IV

 We had the time, you see.
And September.
A month in itself like a lake.

And Wiilliam called it our occupation:
he followed with me
the dandelion seed, the thistle’s beard.

Have you ever known that?
The joint untethering of souls,
trusting entirely that the other

will not tug you back?
Shoulders turning in unison,
gradually voices

rising to the surface.
Don’t talk to me of marriage. Give me this:
no future tugging me back.