Cheesefoot Head
Even these hills
are moving. Nothing
is fixed. Scenery
is an effect of framing,
something made by the eye.
The past, a denial
of time and place, holds
both in a trap,
implying a violence
brought into these settlements
by order, or one at least
made logical, civilised.
Even shifting and evasive
places are contained. All
we have in common -
besides broken pottery
and bones - are images
distorted by a view
taken from the restless
sleep of these hills,
and the dislocation
of our own being,
the wider horizon.
The soil is already
dusted with chalk, picked over
endlessly, enclosed
and consumed, but still
suspended in light
(the plough going that bit
deeper every time).
