This New Year's Day walk is movement of mind, and mind is
the foot as land rises to make giant of all that has foot on it.
Breath and view. The lessening town below closes
upon itself as knuckle-fingered ridges disfigure the eye
to open directions: ancient compasses.
Land and leg beat tattoo as sun sears vision.
Northwards the high peaks rise in leviathan blocks.
God, they are gods!
Transfixion a state of knowing.
A single finger has written, "I love Helen" in early morning snow.
An innocent discovery. The fox followed
in its print, its hungry indent
too high for fat prey asleep.
Local pressure cloud-patterns The Beacons – overall
the system is Polar Maritime. See,
the fox picks his feet high to leave the ground
struck in strong poetry.
A roused grouse cracks the air and shuffles sheep.
A kestrel quarters slopes.
Consciousness works against descent and somehow
everything recognized new, in this pristine day.
Alan's Walk
Mynydd James 550 metres / 1830 feet
O.S. Landranger 161 (214,075)
Weather, a fine cloth of silver
hung about land;
slid between legs scissoring time
towards Chapel Bank.
History holds numb clues:
farm machinery sunk in silent soil.
The Levels, gloved in secrets, erase
last footsteps, ghosting all visitors.
Chapel Bank inclined in claggy marl
and crowned by forgotten headstones
worded and worn as language ever is.
Chapel Bank
near Stone-in-Oxney, East Sussex
O.S. Explorer map 125 (928,297)
32 skybreaths shunt north against my motion south
cumulus building ahead into the already heat
&neat houses punctuate fields
the road straight
to departure
the way of the traveller
time & distance
variable obstacles
now
making more or less of this
road sign after road sign in lettered jumble
the sea pushing off to the left making up a mind for my crossing
the word crossing
sudden
its use baffling and like
a boat upon the water of language
away to horizon
an object of no purpose but to go
between
a mind seizes emptiness by this contract
the subject navigation
Road Lines
from Wexford to Rosslare 11.30 am 24.9.2000