Windy Bank

This is where it all starts

to cave in: the crowded peak

is left behind, the village begins

to drop-the reserved, perched

rows of cottages lowering,

climbing and slipping down over

the buried humps of the dragon.

Ambler Thorn, Catherine Slack: falling,

until the blown cliffhanging road

rounds the breast of Swalesmoor

and settles down, a gentle straight,

levelling off like a cardiograph.

*

I can hear the slow throb of the cold

bell dragging in Christmas Day.

The stars wink back at the seeds

of ice hissing on the steep road.

And you are going home, home

to stashed secret packages

and the warm children lost in dreams.

I can feel the car begin to slide

away in the strain to hold the road

at Windy Bank Top, but the road

shouldered it off and the shocked windscreen

opened for you and the night closed.

+

We sat together, warm, held

in one trance over the family chest:

ancient birth-papers, atheroma,

rubies, silver, gold sovercigns,

posthumous bronze from the trenches,

pennies hoarded two hundred years-

and the musty glow that beat up

into our rapt, ancestral faces.

*

Scrap iron, obsolete steel,

anything: all your livelihood

tossed onto the back of a truck

and haggled over, bought and sold

for the old, essential freedom,

for family, to fix your strong

calloused hands on the steering wheel.

Setting off cold for the funeral

I paused to give my baby son

the ritual kiss, and suddenly,

for a moment, I wanted him

to callous his hands on scrap iron.

*

The brass plate above your face

gleamed in the grey carving wind

as you were lowered beneath the weather.

Already, the low sky was building

more snow, and our hands burned

as we held hands. We walked away

slowly into the cold New Year,

speechless, leaning into the wind.