Up there, a Buzzard!

Thought-up in London, written in Lancashire.  

The shhh, shhh, shhh of moorland grass

I followed better than any voice

Those boots and mac, patch-work, second-hand

Bound into making ‘not even the smallest noise’

You said, your eyes embracing sky

And giving me, still encased, the map

With the pattern of contours beaming there

Wind-bitten fingers feeling the fabric strap.

I tested the breeze as you looked up

Assuming my future through the face

As the familiar smell of wet wool seeped through

The coffee granules dredged beneath the nails.

Permitted to declare ‘the spot’, we rested

Unmarked by route but allowed by sense

I was a child and this was not ‘authority’

But something better, something else.

The tinfoil cracked open for sandwiches, fruit

Looked somehow dull against the stone

Where we ate, cheese, the smack of salad cream

Ground into bread, like slate takes chalk.

It was that familiar combination of the press

Of home, hours spent on places, not the path

Which spoke through the warmth of your shaken head

As I asked if you could fasten the laces, dad.

Rain had faced us with its own animal

Had pushed our cheeks and steamed your glasses

When suddenly, your hand outreached

As if preparing the grasp of something magic.

‘Look!’ You beamed ‘Up there, a buzzard!’

A flickering comma on the sentence of the sky

And there the narrative, the hover, hover

The sensation you had shared too, in time.

Now the sky I see has been named ‘London’

200 miles away a woman, walking for cover

The stone is facing down - in the sound of the station

Though I hear your voice still, and wait for the hover.

                                                                                                                Hover.