Peak District

Peak District (3 poems) 1.In the Peaks Lovefeast Barn and Fearfall Wood Lantern Pike and Cut Throat Bridge Owler Bar and Parsley Drive Speedwell Canyon, Rushup Edge Poors’ Piece, Sinfin, Borrowash Dove Holes, Winkhill, TransPennine Sparklow, Turnditch, Nutbrook Trail Marsh Lane, Hope, and Odin’s Mine 2.Chesterfield Spire Chesterfield kirk’s got a crooked spire That looks like a witch’s hat John Hurt the actor was born there An I’m sure it’s the better for that. 3.Peak District, April Every ewe is flanked by knock-kneed lambs Methodist Chapels stand red-bricked to the wind Up on the moors snow lies like linen bleaching In chilly playgrounds, empty swings creak idle Dykes and privet hedges, square off gardens Stones like Battenberg cakes run on for miles Windy knolls of caves and treacherous potholes Have eaten away the shale and gritstone gorges Limestone pinnacles of chalky white Beside the crow filled woods circled by steaming rams Shops of bottled jams and heady ales Norman kees with curlews wheeling, keening Over the fossilised wing of a dragonfly Morris mummers and long dead yeomanry