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in
collection, Wishbone, 2008,
Shoestring
Press, ISBN: 978 1 904886 78 5;
first
published
in Poetry Ealing 14, April 2005
Climbing Yar Tor
The
pleasure of walking with someone
you
don’t know well
but
come to know better, one stride
matching
itself to the other, finding a way of progressing
despite
this weather. Snippets of talk
snatched
away by the wind
or
stalled for an instant and hanging
outspread
like the buzzard whose two-foot wingspan
governs
the entire valley, drops
in
a rush of silence
on
something small, but important.
The
paths you push
where
paths never were,
transient
as sheeptrails, ponytracks
running
parallel, drawing together, apart,
the
rough heather springing up behind
but
never completely; so that anyone coming after
might
gather the snags of conversation
as
you climb higher, into the clear
domain
of ravens, a dolmen, sudden
lush
emerald rings of grass
where
something human must have been.
And
the wind blows so strongly
when
you stand on the Tor
that
you can hardly stay upright.
It
rips through your cagoule
and
the sound is the sound of a kite
that
someone is trying to fly
or
the sail of a dinghy
years
ago, in a Sussex harbour
shuddering,
testing the air
before
it filled and the perfect silence happened.
Caroline Price
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