Claire Everett

Autumn Deepens

Scafell Pike
in the cleats of our boots . . .
as if that way-stone
on blue distance
always read you are here

You know as well as I that the mountain is best viewed from the lake, the lake from the mountain. We have learned that yesterday's looking-glass is today's tarnished silverware, tomorrow's planished salver. Better still, we watch the weather by hours not days. And those spires dreaming themselves out of the mists of dawn will be dusk's beasts, ambling back to the byre.

Here, more than anywhere, moments are never present, only passing. As mosaics of light where swallows dip their breasts, you feel my joys before me. In inklings of cloud you sense what storms may come.

And though the mind is inclined to wander what might have been covers no ground. Our paths didn't cross in the spring of our lives, but somehow we came by those eastings and northings and the map, now yellowed, is sprung like an origami frog . . .

all seven volumes
of Wainwright's love letter
to the Lakeland fells . . .
fading marginalia:
my hand in yours