Terry Gifford
Lost Hound In Ennerdale
He keeps travelling nose to the ground
Across field, river and footpath
Urgent as ever, tail up. He descended
The wrong valley from yesterday’s hunt.
And last night after a blind abseil
Into Pillar Rock’s dark neck
We descended by torchlight, sensing direction.
Stumbling over rocks on the black edge
Of exhaustion in a nightmare of outcrops
With one fading circle of light: life saving
Batteries should be celebrated in poems
As much as the wood-burning stove
Of our bunkhouse. The soft scent of home
Drew us thorugh trees well before window light.
Here in the dour morning we savour
A wet day in November like reprieved men.
Dark pines squeak with goldcrests, birch woods
Faintly purple the dull fellside, the river
Glares glacial green in deep spate,
Across the lake spray-serpents rise and run
On their tails before fading to a salt taste
In the air downwind. From the half felled forest
Rich resin scent rises like mist.
And the lost hound keeps travelling,
Trapped in his tracks by the circles of scent,
Fenced in a plantation, released by a hole,
Crossing and recrossing the long quiet valley.
His chances are as open as his alert
Native nostrils. We turn from a downpour
And smell out a woodfire.
Page(s) 33
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