Wessenden Head

Yesterday you talked of place

Of the writers three month trip

to the Antarctic; you spoke of the congress

Also of nothingness in everlasting light

On the grey windswept moor

A stones throw from the graves declared

By Brady to torment Longford or to make capital

Out of the somewhat badly affected Myra Hindley

Reed grass angled at a quarter past the hour

Guards over the roughed up rippled water

There are no houses, neither on the horizon

Nor to right or left, human habitats are unseen

Among an unfortunate landscape of tainted beauty

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The eye is distracted

The latest exhibition is of twilight

Photographs composed as paintings

They easily suited utopia or dystopia

To cast doubt in that environment

Being entirely natural now, in this hour

Between day and night, here or wherever

In the world certainty is our hoped for companion

As we open the loose hinged doors

Or catch the last bus from the school yard

Or walk through the half lights of the old town

Into a stranger’s bedroom

Into a house of uneasy corridors

Of our own discouraged misunderstandings

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East or West no matter

Your private view, my questions of nothingness

Your colony of artists in an unromantic city

My question, without answer; the foot of your page

Your new list, a white board for place and purpose

Of landscape and society, of energy (my word)

Of history and a sense of loss

That Americans can hardly imagine

The desolate mid west, the dust bowls

The world at war with new found proclaimers

The stains are almost gone. Your ancestors

And many many more, have left behind

All that you now most earnestly seek to re-establish

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Salts Mill

Give or take

A few months

Nick was getting out of the pool

Forty years ago today. 

In his wake the legacy

Of squiggly lines and a Yorkshireman

Somewhere between Bradford and Los Angeles

An in flight regular between LAX and Heathrow

The diner menu - printed in 1993 offers

A serving of an £8-00 burger salad

No chips but accompanied by authentic

In the curvy shape bottle, Coca-cola

Its one-hundred year old recipe is listed

Then twisted with ice, and a slice of lemon

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I, you, and a chorus of strangers

My foot slips, ankle deep

Into the puddle of muddy water

Your laughter is seen

Looking back into the headlights

This is a Saturday evening

Out on the Lincolnshire Wolds

If you listen closely

You can hear the stars in the sky

The camera clips the top off the spire

As we travel down and along Westgate

The photographer is unsteady I might say

With her hands stretched out of the open sunroof

If you listen closely

You can hear those wheels roll over

Back at the cathedral

A congregation was gathering

Across the top of Castle Hill

The gentlemen in evening dress

Carry their instruments

In leather bound cases

If you listen closely

You can hear the cough

Of the homeless warrior

This is a long way from

The football stadium at Hillsborough

Where today with nigh on twenty-four thousand

Their songs were less of reverence

Or even of untold celebration

Though if you listen closely

You may still hear their ritual timbres

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