The Hook

 

Curled in the hook of the field 

With rooks and kestrels and redwings; 

The brick round tower steams blue 

And the kye lounge in leather. 

 

You stand, feet sown into land, 

Breathing frost and watching the cold horizon.

 

Then there are days when the land squeezes shut, 

In a suffocation of mud and rain;

The air slipstreams, 

And the fields stagnate in mud and mire. 

 

You wait, watching torrents through steamed glass,

As endless water washes the slate clean.

 

Curlews crosshatch the hill’s crest 

Soft calls stitched into this soil; 

Sound hovers, freezes, splits, 

Then falls away. 

 

You toil, turning layer over layer,

One story into another, ploughing through generations.