I

We wrestle wind of Irish Sea

Atop red raw sandstone,

And gusts that wail like ghostly gales,

A far, far cry from home.

Grass purls,

The fading coastline hurls

Past tales,

Crashing from mouths of caves.

All of it now a memory,

Washed out and veiled by waves.

 

II

In valleys hollowed by glaciers

We walk where ages passed.

Two faint silhouettes slip and lurch

On the fells that outlast.

Giants

Turn men to marching ants,

Who search

For tarn ‘tween crag and rigg,

A sanctum in Mother Nature’s

Embrace, sweet as a fig.

 

III

Scampering swift over loose stone,

Falling fast from above,

With feet that weave over water,

Twisting towards the Dove.

Alive,

A sweet and sticky hive.

Shorter

Steps, the path leads up high,

As summer sun gives one last groan,

Waking a moonlit sky.

 

IV

The fells, in Kronos’s shadow,

Down by the reservoir,

Where the rocky trail tries to hold

Onto what still is our

Warm heart,

Beating for lakes we part.

But bold

In view, the Yorkshire dales,

Over which we trav’lers now go,

Rolling on with hay bales.

 

V

A path, through Yorkshire, of limestone,

A pavement from weather.

Food for acid rain under feet.

In the dales of heather,

(Harebells,

Too) the wildflower smells

So sweet,

Its fresh scent a clear wave,

Watering seeds of friendship sown,

Passing Robin Hood’s grave.

 

VI

On the hill, creeping into sight,

In the Eden valley,

Where a troop of cairns march on east,

More miles to the tally.

The Nine

Mark the lost borderline,

Where beasts

With devilish horns brawl.

But at the sight of those cairns, fright

Enters the eyes of all.

 

VII

Left behind, the sheep of Swaledale,

Sheep of foreign Holland,

Those Texel sheep with heavy heads,

Now stand on brawny land.

A vein,

The Swale cuts through terrain

That spreads,

Gaia’s hardened tissue

Squeezing out walkers that exhale

As Richmond comes in view.

 

X

The trail levels out, turning black.

Levelling out, turning

Back the time to cinders and shale.

And the ground starts burning,

This path,

Subject to human wrath.

So frail,

Birds squawk, a broken wing,

And our screaming world turns to black,

Our requiem to sing.

 

VIII

Light illuminates the painting.

The sun burning up high,

Turns fields to flaxen gold shades

With strokes of coloured dye.

A sea

Of lapis lazuli,

That fades

Through the sky’s blues over

Malachite hedgerows, bordering

The frame lit up solar.

 

XI

Through Oberon’s forest, the day

Tires as the sun dapples

Its warming touch through emerald leaves.

Each ray floats, unravels

Along

The rushing water’s song,

And weaves

Between trees that echo

The sound of dell-fairies who play,

Innocent and mellow.

 

IX

Wheat fields replaced and left behind.

Ahead, snaking sandstone

Slides through fields of purple heather,

Whilst heat swells and cracks bone.

Sweat leaks,

As veins bulge, forming peaks.

Feathers

From owls, stuck into hats,

To shade the Sun’s tightening bind,

As pheasants run down tracks.

 

XII

Ghostly mist from Northern Sea veils

Eastern coast in myst’ry,

As wandering souls creep onwards,

Burying injury.

The shore

Sings the tail of the score

With words

That sink into my chest,

Falling with the final exhale,

As time rides the wave’s crest.

---

During the summer, I undertook Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk, from St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay. The night before departing, my film camera jammed. So, I turned to poetry to capture the images along the way, hoping to expose them through words rather than film. Lying in the tent at night, I recalled images from each day, rendering them into poetry. My images are developed here. ∎

Words by Dylan Squires. Art by Lottie Hassan.