To the Far Tor

Poem inspired by Devonshire landscape, uk

I look to the top

To the far tor, looming;

Bare, honed and huddled bones

Revealing their formations

To themselves; a wise assembly

Into which I'm bound

To share their silence

Upon their cracked stone palms;

To reach a distance;

Survey formations in this life, before

Some far release...

Not yet...

Let the hills be dim and rugged in the cold wind

All around

But there are birds for it is spring soon.

A plane - flying low - turns

And I think of all we are

This struggle -

Hardship  - fellow, windblown figures -

Piloting their way to the tops.

 

I come to feel this life - exposed here -

One reality, forged by forces, stark -

I bring my soul into its massive hands;

The rocks like buried fingers

Cannot move where they've been set.

 

This life of art

For just a vast, restless mass

Struggling in the dark

To keep alive and breathing;

Producing food,

Burning our energies

Back to the sun.

Where we cannot live without our other

Tiny, island lives;

Close but far-lit tors, with beacon fires

Fierce, hungry stars

We are;

Blinking on and off...

Sharing in the taking, the restless

Need to give, the being; our own breaking...

Feeding some message to the earth -

With strange circles

Celebrating themselves so well -

Through us;

Deep-dented by so many sudden, violent storms

That test the whole landscape.

I keep climbing

To burn on, to burn free

And then be gone

To memory, the force of love 

and the ghostly wind

Haunting glorious ruins of time.

These unreal, barren spaces

Must be roamed to feel and understand

The gaps - this other side - to the fires

Of modern designs, the new campaigns

Of our own conjuring.

Striving to keep us fixed and safe

And not exposed or loose upon

The hillsides of the world.

So I take this slower time, today

Breathed in, and smuggled away

Back down, steadily

To the sheltered spaces where we fight 

For brightness and joy -

For brilliance -

Building up our fading towers of words...

However long they stand within the shadow

Of the far tor, looming.

June 2015

Author's Note

a lot of my poetry i read out in my mind as though i'm speaking, dramatically!
The rock formations that inspired this one are quite dramatic, so i was hoping to capture a bit of that via some deep reflection.