after posting you a mad stare
from their boxy pupils.
One winter we came across five
black, icicle-crowned cows.
But in summer, when the heather's full of nests,
you'll hear curlews
following you, haunting your memory, maybe,
with their eerie cries;
or, right under your nose,
a grouse will whirr up surprised,
like a poet startled by a good line
when it comes to her sideways.
There are no - well, very few - trees.
Hawthorn the English call May,
a few struggling birches.
But of wagtails and yellowhammers, plenty,
and peewits who never say
peewit,
more a minor,
go
'way
go
'way .
Lots of clouds, soot-purple like the sheep,
though sometimes fleecy enough,
Blake's lambs grazing
light blue fields in his Jerusalem?
Not at Salter's Gate.
They raise animals to eat in England's Durham.
Salter. Who was he? Why was this his gate?
Maybe the base root's
sa/tlls,
Latin for leap. The place has a feeling of
survival, its unstoppable view,
a reservoir, ruins of the lead mines, new
forestry pushing from the right, the curlew.
