On to Keighley Moor Rersevoir
I am sorry.
Despite being born not five miles wide,
Away to the side,
I never stopped by the track,
a route that led to your cold wet centre.
I imagined you: calm waters with infrequent sighs.
You were to border that thicketed hardy bush
The ugly stems of urchin gigantic that seemed to me a herd.
each whistled now and then, out of tune,
And sobbed a low rustling,
Like the futile flutters of a dragon fly,
Its feet stuck in sinking sands.
The air is clean, a new sterility,
No particles of pollen or dust
permeate the still born air.
A Few insects make infrequent flyers,
A new lunar like zoo, barren like an aging woman,
Still having something to give, a strange, furious, fertility.
I imagined the sheep would be around.
They scare me, these, my maybe meals,
They dare stray into my path,
They should be distant
like the clouds they do not resemble,
But this ensemble, breached, rudely,
The cobbled walls of endless rocks,
Their worn toes spoked on the spongy, untrue ground.
This land is owned by no man.
No nomad would possibly want to possess it.
Only that which can be cordoned off,
Properties and palisades,
Are valued by men.
That’s why they fear these English steppes,
They can never own them.
that’s the real moor,
To dumb and ugly to be siphoned off,
Firm ground a rare luxury,
like crushed beetle blood
making imperial purple dress.
The old reservoir path.
I mapped you out like a god.
I looked down at you
And saw that it was good
I thought I knew it all,
But I never reached the waters body.
I got close, I had reached the point,
When the slopes of hills
lined like the backs of brown bears,
Enrounded everything.
I was lost in a bowl, a furred sink,
As water poured by like bad wine.
an old house stood as an obstacle,
An excuse,
A mini hill in its own right
Who would live this far out?
I dare not go on beyond,
Signs of life,
A life too wild, it turned me back.
I am a coward. But you were very scary.
I’d passed by grave yards, and farm yards,
But now I had no company except
a drained dog,
by my side,
An urban shepherd,
How his genes must have groaned at the sight of his lost flock,
Like an Anglican Vicar.
In the end, I shied away from the moors calls,
