Wharfedale
It begins where
cloud and fell merge to mist,
wetness seeping
through sphagnum, reed,
sluggish pools of
peat that eddy, then erode;
sykes, runnels,
that groove the hags,
cut to grit, blend
to beck,
carve a shallow gill,
bracken, rowan, birch
edged.
A dale is a deep
and secret place
where water, ale
brown shimmers pebbles,
and dippers, quick
and sharp, dive.
Along damp banks hawkweed
glisten;
above high pasture
and thorn, a lark,
fixed in the sky,
holds its twin note.
Then by the human
walls of moss-covered stone
that measure out the
land, the fields,
by fences of tangled,
rusted wire, thistle,
it meanders through
mouths of becks:
Beckermonds.
The river too, now has
a name,
Wharfe, with its
own fickle Goddess,
Verbeia.
It tumbles down wet
shelves of palest limestone,
though that long,
lovely channel
where celandines
sparkle, ash trees whisper:
Langstrothdale.
Stronger now the flow,
the thrust,
below settlement of
Celt, Viking,
Yockenthwaite,
Hubberholme,
names as guttural
as clint on the high crags
from where the
jackdaws circle.
Then curves, twists,
into the broad green floor
of a glacier-planed
valley, between high fells,
slipping under the stone
arches
built to carry
peopled ways,
drovers, packmen,
traders.
As the river flows
gentler,
hamlets grow to villages:
Buckden, Kettlewell,
Grassington,
where once miners tunnelled
hills for ore,
their hovels,
cottages, transformed,
centuries on, to
idylls.
Soon by Burnsall,
Barden, the sacred river
betokens death,
beauty;
through its chasm
of grit,
under the oaks, the
beech,
foam-white power of
destruction.
Here the watery
cave of Verbeia,
ruthless taker of
lives.
Yet downstream, all
anger relented,
the river, in gentle
curve, tempts.
This is where priors,
dukes, came to dream,
their ruins a
gentle echo of time.
A landscape is a
longing.
CS
