A poem I wrote about the experience of cycling or walking over to Leighton Moss during lockdown. A large RSPB owned bird reserve in reedbeds on the other side of the hill from our village. I’m pleased so say that it has now been ‘published’ in a John Muir Trust newsletter.
The birds have taken over
I ride,
Anticipation growing,
I crest the hill,
There it is,
This natural world,
An expanse of reeds,
A wall of noise,
This is how it was,
To this it has returned,
Life has slowed, quietened, and into that space comes
The sound of a world which struggles to be heard
But now thunders into full voice
The wild has taken over
With it’s songs of freedom
Singing us free of the endless crushing cycle
Of lives lived in the machinery of the modern world
Ever faster it flails, ever louder it whirs
Tearing to pieces this Mother Earth
Until this…
This silent death by which we can hear the life
When the machinery begins again,
Will we still be listening?
Narrow Roads in the Deep North
It’s now many months since I began writing Haiku in lockdown. Inspired by reading the Haiku poet Matsuo Basho’s travelogue ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ I have returned to the poems I wrote in the spring. Revising them and putting them in a context of prose and with footnotes which I hope makes them more accessible. Each one was the result of local walks and rides from our new home in Warton village on the Southern edge of the Arnside and Silverdale area of outstanding natural beauty.
Leighton Moss Bird Reserve
I wander out north of the village. Through the tall sycamores and beeches of the old wood. Pungent wild garlic covers the woodland floor as the slim path alternates between copse and small fields of pasture. From its end a hidden trail up over limestone steps leads through the trees and sharply downwards into the hollow of deepdale. Whispers of traffic noise disappear in this sunken wood where a pond once lay. As I reach the far side of the dell a stand of oaks finishes abruptly at a gate. From here the moss dominates the view of the shallow valley, a sea of reeds. The roads have fallen quiet, and nature is in full voice. As I walk closer to the Moss the babbling of ducks can be heard from the waters and the rustle of a light breeze through fluttering reeds. Then it is as if all falls silent and it comes, like a foghorn from a grounded vessel, hidden deep within the marsh.
1.
Suddenly I hear
Above chattering reeds
Bittern’s booming
Our garden
I’m out in our garden. Behind our back hedgerow are cow fields which dip at the far side into a mire of boggy ground. On the other side of the old hedge a spring flows. In heavy rain it floods and the village’s south side becomes encircled by wetland. After a few days groups of wigeon and teal arrive. A variety of waders somehow find this new feeding ground and inhabit the edges and islands of the waters. A flock of Curlew though stays long after the water has subsided. Occasionally they wheel in flight just overhead, feeding on the waterlogged field behind and emitting their evocative call.
2.
Over the hedge
The warble of the Curlew
A returning friend
Warton crag
I walk up past the Brewery and through the old quarry. Above the quarry the woods peter out into scrubland and tiny meadow clearings awash with fresh bluebells. Just before the summit I stand on a rocky limestone perch. The sun of the longer spring days falls towards the bay’s distant horizon. Across the sands the Lakeland fells rise in the late evening light
3.
The bay reflects
Dreams of the far shore
In evening’s light
Holme Park Fell
We cycle northwards on usually busy roads. On reaching a farm track we head up the fell, legs working hard on the steep road. Through the gate at the end the tarmac gives way and the land opens up. A track through the gorse brings us to the raised plateau. A kind of limestone moonscape punctuated by the odd, lonely ash or yew. A high shelf surrounded by farmland and ringed by distant fells, the Dales, Lakes, Howgills and Bowland. The M6 passes below us but is now almost completely unheard. I see a flash of bright green as a woodpecker alights from a tree to our left, then we hear it. The first cuckoo of the year, from African shores which now feel ever more distant.
4.
Finally here
Coming faintly on the breeze
Calling cuckoo
Warton sands
I walk out West from the village, over the railway bridge and past the dairy farm at the end of sand lane. Here the track widens passing the last field of pasture before the saltmarsh is reached. I swing northwards and onto that empty expanse of grassland and rushes. The bay stretches out in front of me, a patchwork of channels and sandbars. Far out flocks of waders reel and dive, a distant world. Occasionally the fast retreating tide erodes a mud bank and it collapses, crashing into the water like a tiny carving glacier. I walk until the path fades out and the silence grows. The sea breeze drowns out all but the Skylark’s exuberant song and the occasional empty train which runs a line straight across the edge of the marsh. On my return I pass the stock car racing track. A Jerry can creaks in the wind as it sings through the vibrating metal fence work. The cars now gone a flock of linnets call to one another.
5.
Roaring engines
Can not be heard
For linnet’s song
Summerhouse hill
I pass the crag heading up coach road to the grounds of Leighton hall. A well-used footpath heads out through woodland and on to the top of Summerhouse Hill. A wind battered wall of sycamore trees mark the ridgeline. Before the path descends towards the moss I stop at a row of benches looking out over the forests of Arnside and Silverdale and to the Lakes beyond. Noise is returning to these parts as restrictions ease. I feel a quiet calm replaced by excitement, dis-ease and uncertainty. The Lakeland hills appear somehow closer. Doting the hill are Scots pine and Hawthorne, May trees whose late spring blossom is caught by the wind.
6.
The gusting winds
Have scattered May’s blossom
As spring leaves
Miscellaneous other Haiku’s
On retreat at a very windy cottage on a remote Welsh hillside
7.
Thundering wind
But right there still!
Deafening silence
At the foodbank
8.
Rosy red
Tears cannot be seen
On young cheeks
Endnotes
A little bit of explanation of the Haiku’s
1. Both chatter and booming imply human noise yet here the human noise has gone and it is as if the natural world is competing in generating noise
2. It is as if the Curlew is a friend greeting me over the hedgerow
3. The dreams being reflected are the Lakeland fells themselves and dreams of adventures to be had in them
4. Is it the Cuckoo coming on the breeze or the call? It is finally heard or finally come all the way from Africa? Finally is the cuckoo the name of the bird or the call itself?
5. Although now only linnets can be heard at the car track the implication is that they are drowning out the car noise to signify the fragile nature of this change. As soon as they stop singing it will return
6. The leaves are scattered by the wind as Spring is also leaving
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