Hard days on the fells with the flock,
their soft greet, the curlew’s lonely flute,
the waters welling fresh from the ground
with a gurgle, lick between stones and gather
and fall and widen as they fall,
the warm winds through the heath
these were all he heard or cared to hear
in a world now shaped by silences.
So he chose this way that skirted the village places
where washing floated and slapped in the sunlight,
curious faces, pegging out, peeped around sheets
and shone upon him like a torch
Evenings in the squat cottage he watched
his mother locked with her loss beside the fire,
listened to the squeak of her rocker
and the splutter and shifts in the grate.

Rain had pressed over the sultry glimmers
of the past few days, now as thunder muttered
through the hills the first fat drops pocked
the silky dust of his path home, freshened the air
suddenly cool, chill as the wind swelled.
Single wet smacks on leaves, merged to a patter,
blurred to a hiss; tops swayed and heaved.
He hunched and quickened his stride.

Home for the night he gazed at her bent back
before drawing up to his meal. She had laid out the table
in such a way that his back would be towards her.
The evening drew in and thickened to night.
The rain swept over the roof, flung by the wind.
He heard her rock and rock, pause and draw back slightly
as the chimney coughed a plume of smoke into the room.
He moved past the frail slump of her and adjusted the damper,
looked back at the pale sliver of her profile
shining through wisps of dishevelled hair,
the glitter of eyes, remote, focussed on another time
unaware of the solid ruth of him beside her.
He wanted to reach out and touch her hand,
traced, instead, his thumbnail along the grain of the mantle,
dug for words, a word,
that might test the citadel of her grief,
fill the pure emptiness of the space in the house.