Bardsea
Coiled and straining
their muscles enduring springs
sleek in the rain-mist of the fells.
They moved uphill,
bounding, too fast for you to follow,
rounding struggling rams into tight circles
and taking the ewes to their lambing fields –
and the sheep yield to that repressed ferocity
the discipline of dogs.
On the sands, at low tide,
among worm-like ridges
a length of rope lay
tumbled and frayed into a sad knot
made firm by seawater –
I could not unpick its intricacies.
These tense lines are like the mountains
on contour maps.
I want to bring you to those places of open water
where we can be cold together
where we can lounge on shorelines
on boundaries
in purgatories
unfixed as the gulls nesting at the treeline.