Moor Voices

suddenly out of rain
reaching inscribed boundaries
turn around
and go back again!
or skirting the edge
find a way through
where ragged sheep startle in our path

memories of spectral legionaries
marching on the roman road
near crookstone barn's
limed-up sheepfold

provisional mapping
moorland contours

admonitory finger of
cement works tower
smoking
over
grey ditch
bradwell's
submerged frontier

land
stone
race
parish

archaeological epiphanies

in the shadow of a knoll
a king was hanged
from a tree in a garden

corrupt

no saviour
from rebels
heretics
developers
dissenters
redtape surveyors
warlords in their wargear
the magi wesleys in their gowns
urgent characters
wrecked steadings
in & out of woods
hirsute timber in piles
labourers in shit in fields
trapped in slurry vats
gulping excrement
mam tor to shatton edge
barbed stiles
electrified hedgerow
scrawled warnings
the anxious delineation of space
turn around and go back

visitors pause at
adventure centres
farm shops
eggs for sale
mushrooms
cagoules
accents
herd

threats of
desperate genealogy
heritage &
chestnut rusticity

at hope
we drink
buy postcards
move on / knowing
the bus will be on time / thinking
as we cross back into the next county
what is the collective noun for people


© Tom Chivers 2006