Morgan’s Hill
After the rain
a long view – and larks.
A climb through three gates,
but worth it for the best of Wiltshire.
We, surprised even now by this green antiquity
touching instinct, breathe in and smile.
And the sun points out meadows,
clouds paint themselves
and high Morgan’s Hill sings its great wide song
to us until
we turn to the circle of trees,
and the hollow hauls us into itself.
A stump, scattered stones,
a fire’s corpse and a stagnant pool;
a rook floats, sodden, swollen.
Here we are no longer part of things -
or part of something other.
We leave symptoms of ourselves everywhere.
Out there the winds dilute us.
Here, face to face with these echoes,
we fall silent.
Saddened, with nothing
but the rushing of beech about us,
we stumble out,
finding a sky we do not recognize
full of something darker than the rain.
Sean Street, 1989