The Yoredale Beds
My ear against the turf, I try
to hear my heart
sound underground, an echo of
a darkened sun.
An old wall lies below the grass
just to the north
of where the monks’ road makes its big
sweep across Mossdale.
It runs below more recent walls
shown only
by a shadow thrown by a low sun
and bears no name
on maps in this over-mapped land,
so old all trace
of cause or maker is long lost,
although close by
I see the marks of bronze-age men,
their villages lumps
in uneven fields beside the karst
where lapwings wheel.
Water has long abandoned it
for the deep runnels,
unheard below the light green fleece
of the dry ground.
In the Black Keld hydrology
a violent storm
sent the flood pulsing through
the marathon crawls.
Under a great weight of rock
the shallow caverns,
carved by the water’s patience, filled
to the ceiling in seconds.
Six bodies lie in the Mossdale caves
upslope from here,
the secret fruit of the earth we seek
on our brief journeys.
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