Here’s
a man with five dogs,
three black, two white,
flowing over the fell before him –
in the lee of the wind
he makes his way
up the bright valley
to rain-dark Red Pike
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| PINES ON THE
RIDGE |
The pines let
the northerly rake them,
they roar like water over a weir,
pines loud with the sullen and beautiful wind
before which they bend but do not break –
the wind of the north their servant,
their roaring a thousand tall ships under full sail
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| CASTLERIGG'S
STONE CIRCLE |
How sternly they
bend their snow-flecked brows
over the stone circle bedded in marshy turf,
Helvellyn, Skiddaw, Causey and Blencathra,
bending their brows in deep and constant thought
over the circle of stones set fast in rain-logged earth,
bright rainy air threading through their ring,
making a February promise – Spring, old
like these stones and ranges, is on the way,
brand-new Spring, snow-burdened, bright as belief,
dark as the shadows that sharpen their scythes on these stones.
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Penelope Shuttle's eight collection, REDGROVE'S
WIFE, (Bloodaxe Books, 2006) was shortlisted for The Forward
Prize,and for the T S Eliot Award. She lives in Cornwall,
UK, and is the widow of poet Peter Redgrove. She is a Hawthornden
Fellow, and tutors for The Poetry School, The Arvon Foundation
etc. In October 2007 she read in Canada and the US as part
of the Cornwall Poets in North America tour. This April she
is running a five day poetry residential at Almaserra Vella
in Spain.
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