Ian D. Smith
Sunday Walk
Sunday, because we had the choice (and kit)
we got out on the northern hills to walk
silently trailing sheep-paths, drove-roads,
bone ridges, well trodden veins
away from it all to feel again
(still) the aching elemental:
the staghorn moss encrusted wind-bent tree
permanently stranded in winter's thin resilience;
the oil-bleeding bog whose dark suck
nourishes the bone-deep imaginings;
the ruined farmhouse o'th heights
we could try to restore but couldn't live in if we did.
The north was always this:
we wouldn’t like it if it wasn't
wafting melancholic, all heather, stone and sheep's jaw-bone -
paradise birds wouldn't last long up here!
And so, in the middle of a glacial dump
already ancient in ancient times
we come at last across a Celtic stone spoke
defining once a new world; a narrower way, an easier yoke
and kiss and fumble at this the world's bisection
stood leaning timeless for a while
no interrupting shrike nor screech
the emptiness brooding full
till voices of some city group
drift our way, dispelling us
striding in our favourite boots
off down again to the pub, the car, and home.
Page(s) 16
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The