stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 16773
[post_author] => 18
[post_date] => 2016-03-31 19:17:57
[post_date_gmt] => 2016-03-31 19:17:57
[post_content] => We got our hefting up here all right,
the wind curling round us visibly, curing us,
as if we were stones to be placed
and lichen-dappled with glacial deliberation.
And now, thinking with these hills,
a wandering sentence can be levelled
between them, tested against the mean
of wilful horizon and capricious sky.
Grey-brown green-black lutulent river
drawn easily as a snagged thread
pulling the best effects of the valley with it.
Light hurdles swiftly into huge stands of pines
and hides there with great abandon
intimate with the windage creaks and groans
in the crowns of these self-shredding trees
brashed and rusting beneath it.
Pulled back the thick curtain of moss
and found wheel ruts slanting
through the Ordovician, pulled back
at the false summit and wandered towards
a trig point decentred in the mist,
spectral sheep splayed tarsally among
the drop-skied moors, while someone else
is summiting surely in their own home-made uplands.
A snipe whittles up from a cloak of rushes
and I try to keep its ember alight with my eye
until with perfect clearance it falls
off the edge, or edges beyond seeing.
A particular breeze tugs its harmonic
adjusted to our hearing, we are earmarked,
as across the Irish sea a shadow range
of mountains echoes unsayably.
Here the so-called Black Road
on its endless ancient traverse over the ridge
intersects the local corpse road
that looks to another false summit
before the tireless sway of the Atlantic.
The real inheritance: looking at ravens,
waiting for their croak in the welcoming gloom.
The names of all the rocks make their own ground.
[post_title] => Long Distance Relationship with a Mountain
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] =>
[post_name] => long-distance-relationship-with-a-mountain
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2016-08-01 09:56:13
[post_modified_gmt] => 2016-08-01 09:56:13
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] => http://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/?post_type=poems&p=16773
[menu_order] => 0
[post_type] => poems
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw
[meta_data] => stdClass Object
(
[wpcf-published-in] =>
[wpcf-date-published] => 2015
[wpcf-summary-description] => 'Long Distance Relationship with a Mountain' was the second prize winner of the 2015 National Poetry Competition.
From the judges: "Do we write landscape poems or do they write themselves through us? ‘Long Distance Relationship with a Mountain’ is a poem of luminous mystery, not least in its human-natural interinanimations, in John Donne’s word. This is poetry as field composition, assembling, mapping, ‘thinking with these hills’ to summon the wonders of place into being before the reader’s eyes." - David Wheatley
[wpcf-rights-information] =>
[wpcf-poem-award] => 2nd Prize, National Poetry Competition 2015
[wpcf_pr_belongs] =>
)
[poet_data] => stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 16765
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => David Hawkins
[slug] => david-hawkins
[content] => David Hawkins is a writer, journalist, editor and ecologist from Bristol. He grew up on the banks of the Severn Estuary, read English at New College, Oxford, then worked for several years in art history publishing, subsequently retraining as a botanist and habitat surveyor. Particular interests are the intersections of landscape and time and human activity. He has work in the forthcoming book from Dunlin Press, The Migrant Waders. David was a founding editor of the Likestarlings collaborative poetry project.
)
)
stdClass Object
(
[ID] => 16765
[forename] =>
[surname] =>
[title] => David Hawkins
[slug] => david-hawkins
[content] => David Hawkins is a writer, journalist, editor and ecologist from Bristol. He grew up on the banks of the Severn Estuary, read English at New College, Oxford, then worked for several years in art history publishing, subsequently retraining as a botanist and habitat surveyor. Particular interests are the intersections of landscape and time and human activity. He has work in the forthcoming book from Dunlin Press, The Migrant Waders. David was a founding editor of the Likestarlings collaborative poetry project.
)
We got our hefting up here all right,
the wind curling round us visibly, curing us,
as if we were stones to be placed
and lichen-dappled with glacial deliberation.
And now, thinking with these hills,
a wandering sentence can be levelled
between them, tested against the mean
of wilful horizon and capricious sky.
Grey-brown green-black lutulent river
drawn easily as a snagged thread
pulling the best effects of the valley with it.
Light hurdles swiftly into huge stands of pines
and hides there with great abandon
intimate with the windage creaks and groans
in the crowns of these self-shredding trees
brashed and rusting beneath it.
Pulled back the thick curtain of moss
and found wheel ruts slanting
through the Ordovician, pulled back
at the false summit and wandered towards
a trig point decentred in the mist,
spectral sheep splayed tarsally among
the drop-skied moors, while someone else
is summiting surely in their own home-made uplands.
A snipe whittles up from a cloak of rushes
and I try to keep its ember alight with my eye
until with perfect clearance it falls
off the edge, or edges beyond seeing.
A particular breeze tugs its harmonic
adjusted to our hearing, we are earmarked,
as across the Irish sea a shadow range
of mountains echoes unsayably.
Here the so-called Black Road
on its endless ancient traverse over the ridge
intersects the local corpse road
that looks to another false summit
before the tireless sway of the Atlantic.
The real inheritance: looking at ravens,
waiting for their croak in the welcoming gloom.
The names of all the rocks make their own ground.
