Wind over water,
………………..land leaning eastwards
with a hundred birds,
unseasonable wind swimming on wind.

We walk up the hill like old bones
take shelter
between the Hawthorn trunk and limestone slabs.

Gather thoughts.
Gather wonder.

We walk back down,
leave above us
………………..blue sky and white clouds.

 

This poem is one of several revealed from notes I wrote while walking to the Little Asby Hawthorn in midwinter 2015. Here are the notes, with the ‘found’ words outlined:

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It somehow takes skin longer to dry out when it’s windy. I have taken shelter in the lee of a wall. Wind is being funnelled over the top in a whip-whorl of force. On the tarn the water is racing in waves and has engulfed all the land that was Marsh in the summer. The bulrushes are leaning eastwards with the wind at their backs, their heads nodding furiously with a hundred individual rhythms, like birds pecking.  When the rain comes past in gusts it is cold, feels icy – although this is strange as it has been so unseasonably warm recently. 

There are no birds to be heard. Maybe the wind is out-noising them but more likely they are taking shelter. I have only seen two swans. They were swimming on the opposite shore when we arrived and they too have disappeared now, out of this fierce wind.

We walk up the hill and on the exposed top, where limestone juts out like old bones, I have to take shelter, to stop myself from being blown over. I fight my way in between gusts of wind to the base of the Hawthorn. Its trunk is gloriously solid and still, and parts of the gnarled bark are dry. I rest my hand on them. I crouch down into the crevices between limestone slabs to gather my thoughts, and write in my notebook. Beside me are small gatherings of tiny bones. What is it, I wonder, who hides them here?

When we leave the ridge and walk back down to the road, it seems that the sheets of hail leave too. Above us, now that the rain has passed, blue sky and white clouds.

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More here on the Little Asby Hawthorn and associated blogs.