LETTER FROM KIRKHEATON

I have no camera but imagination’s tinted glass

I cannot pass this crumbling dry stone wall

Without a break to catch the vistas of the chain of Pennine hills

That splash their shades of colour like mercury in the rising glass.

The June sun focuses upon the vivid grass,

The elder’s pale amber, the Victoria Tower’s finger

On the pulse of past shared walks, Emley’s mast

And the girl from there whose early death

We somehow took the blame for: her reach from the beyond.

Still troubles us, the only ones to mourn you, Chris,

Your corn-gold hair splayed like a longship’s mast

You sailed to Valhalla through a sea of passing loves,

The deceits of married men who took your beauty

For a moment’s gift then cast you with your seven year old son adrift.

The sun has gone but birdsong blunders on

As I take courage from the gone, the waving grass,

The sculptured pylons of my shadowed past.