Crossing the Border

Fences are never needed: Herdwick sheep
that grace the Lakeland hills with quiet bleating
have learned the boundaries they are to  keep.

Norse settlers could recognise the greeting
of every herd heathed to its native fell,
and cared for them through hardship, knowing well
that troubles pass and all revives with spring.
A harsher husbandry is now depleting
those ancient flocks, and old ways are retreating.
Can thought forget the soul’s remembering?
Is all there is the least that we will take?

May we reclaim that instinct lost to man
to know our bounds; then nature shall remake
a truer borderline than fences can.

(Foot and mouth epidemic, Cumbria, 2001)

David Anthony