The Drover.

The mist clings to the high edge like a curse
The cold fingers of spirits stroking my face
With some strange longing – maybe thoughts
Of a past life - half remembered sunlight and dreaming days
When the heather tasted of honey
And birds sang sonnets in the vibrating air.

As I sit with my back to a fossil wall
Where time itself crawls through the silence,
Through the unearthly veil:
The jangle of tiny bells,
Of jostling panniers,
The soft whinny of a horse or pony,
The familiar word of command, the friendly
Bark of a dog about his duty, steam
From moist nostrils merging into the dull muffled
Blanket of clinging air.

There are ghosts here on Stake Side
Still working the old tracks, Jaggers
Leading their ponies and horses from the Silk Road,
Up the cloughs and over the moors by Windgather,
From Saltersford, passed Shuttlingslow
Laden with silk and salt.

I peer into the gloom, straining to catch
Sight of this shaman of the hills,
One of these long-distant travellers,
These star men, who merge into the landscape
As readily as any crag or gnarled Peakland oak.

“On, Samson, on,” bespoke a muffled voice:

Then shapes loomed like high stones on the moor,
Snow surely swirled and swarmed in that spot,
Elements raged like old stone gods,
Words froze to the tongue.
The raven croaked in the quiet
And blue streaked from above.
Distant the bells then gone
No prints
No signs
Only wind playing tricks
And Crom asleep in the ground.*

* From Alan Garner’s Thursbitch