When you have been brought up on the moor,
Weaned on wind, thick mist, low cloud and freezing rain,
The elements tease out your inner sense of direction,
Navigation honed down between heather and bracken,

The maze of narrow winding, sheep tracks
Imprinted on early memory,
The granite compass set firm within your bones,
Old seams worked out, your skin a glistening sheen

Flecked with quartz and lichen, capped off with sedge
And cotton grass, drinking from a cupped hand,
The school of rivers and streams flowing from your eyes,
Soft dark peat that melts between your fingers,

Sucks you in, fathom by fathom, until only your head
And shoulders show above the belly of the mire,
And then your words hover,
Words that are heard faintly on the lips of the wind,

Words that slowly die away as the moor
Swallows you whole, till there is nothing left
But the reedy, fluty song of skylarks
Spiralling up from your finger tips.

That year winter tightened its fist upon the land,
Laid siege to the prison,
Snuffed out a few thousand sheep
And in a twinkling wrote off a handful of Morris Minors.

Snow and black ice took their toll
The land’s clock stopped dead, icicles came home
To roost, suspended in their own solidity.
Trains equipped with snow ploughs, mysteriously

Vanished overnight, swallowed up by Siberian snowdrifts
And never to be seen again farmhouses were battened down.
Every morning the rime on the windows ran riot
Like maps of underwater currents, icy ferns that grew

Of their own accord, a crystal world unfolding
As you watched, then before breakfast,
The rime scraped off with your fingernails.
Snow creaked underfoot, sheep became icebergs,

Rivers became glaciers. Arctic on your doorstep
Polar exploration, a distinct possibility.
Muffled silence became addictive,
Spring wound back to zero. Even the sea froze.

Raven black and calling
Circling above the granite
The carcase of the tor laid out
Bare, worthy of appraisal

Sweeping the ground with a keen eye
Calling the frost to heel,
Wing tip glistens in the early sun
Deeper black, the inner territory

Stands out starkly against
Dry subtle duns of brown bracken
Deep throaty call that reverberates
As a regiment of highland cattle graze the skyline.

By the wall, a faint run with a ditch nearby
Just out of sight of the prison

A clump of beech trees
You might pass without even realising

That a cottage once stood here.
He may even have planted the trees himself.

Snug, Pascoe’s Well tucked in under
Slender granite slabs beside the road

More ferns and a foxgloves
Few if any ever stop to look.

Another small shrine to clear water
Half silted up, but useful in summer droughts

And in the very depths of winter
When all else was frozen hard

The well kept its composure
Made itself very useful.

I watched him from a safe distance
As he dismounted then crouched down

On one knee in the trough of the moorland
A solitary figure, his back turned and bent

Rough tweed jacket and leather gaiters
Blended in, reins thrown over the horse’s neck

As he deftly played with fire,
And let it run where he wanted.

At first he did not notice me,
But I watched him for a full five minutes

Before he turned, put his foot in the stirrup
And regained the well-worn saddle

Not a word did the quarter man speak
Yet we both marvelled at his handiwork

A ritual offering to bring new grass
The smell of burning heather

The dry crackle and blue smoke
Running smoothly like a bolt of silk

Between his fingers,
Towards the row of standing stones

Out at the tie he laid the turves bare
Wet and glistening, the low bank
Straightened up to his bidding
Explored the soft darkness

With a long, narrow iron
That dug into the peat
Each cut a thin slice laid out
Like small black bibles, history

Waiting to be read, the resurrection
Stacked up in small stooks, warmth
Gleaned from the neck of the moor
Carried home on the wind’s saddle.