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Helen Farish

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The Lorton Valley

This not quite cross of roads –
I’ve found myself here
to my recollection twice before

Low Lorton 1/4 Loweswater 3

and each time automatically
my foot lifts from the accelerator,
shifts to the brake though it is simply

a meeting of ways, an oblique
junction complicated further
by the church road forking.

High Lorton 1/4 Buttermere 6

If we feel a chill each year
on the day we will die
then does the involuntary nod

I perform here signal back
to an unknown memory?
On the way to Pickett Howe 

Crummock 2 Hopebeck 1

did we once turn off the B road
onto this less-than-four-metres-wide road,
and did we pause here, my father

taking in distances, Mellbreak and Grasmoor
beckoning, a moment’s symmetry
in days gone awry?

Brake. Reverse. Rest
on the wrought iron seat,
high and low equidistant.

 

Page(s) 10-11

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