a Poem for Thursday....Preston Patrick in March

Preston Patrick in March

Preston Patrick in March.

 If you don’t hurt crows

They won’t hurt you

My father said

And I believed him.

Chorus :-

While water drips

In a blue plastic drum

Water runs from

A pipe in the yard

Water brown bubbling

And smelling strong.

In the ring of trees

Black branched

Against a pearly sky

Crows weave nests.

Chorus:-

Ghost trees hover high

On early green hills

And mist and low cloud

Merge in distant perspectives.

Chorus:-

There sits a flatbed trailer

Unmoved by their caws

And rusty supports form

As iron oxidises.

Chorus:-

The inspiration for the first stanza came out of a poem by Vicki Feaver in her  book,

 “The Handless Maiden”…Cape Poetry

Wasps…

“If you don’t hurt wasps

They won’t hurt you

My father told me.

But I didn’t believe him,”

Kirby Lonsdale day out.

The sun shone and the sweet spring air gave us back a hope after a hard winter....

...in Kirby Lonsdale...

.... the new bridge over the Lune river...

......the old bridge...

 ...held together...stone and iron...

...saturdays and sundays are for cyclists' gatherings...

...close by, the cricket field gets a makeover for the new season...

...and dogs and owners play by the riverside...

...freshly planted willow twigs protect the banks...

..while spring flowers clothe them...

...the trees begin to unfurl their leaves...

...and blossom blooms along the path...

...ancient walls bloom too with tiny ferns...

...and further up the rough meets the smooth where two streams join...

...in the old churchyard wild daffodils fill the space between the graves...

..and in this area Ruskin had his famous view...

...while ancient gargoyles gaze endlessly down on all.....

...and the churchyard cat snoozes in the sudden heat of an April day.

Ruskin's View.

"For most men, an ignorant enjoyment is better than an informed one; it is better to conceive the sky as a blue dome rather than a dark cavity; and the cloud as a golden throne than a sleety mist"
John Ruskin, Modern Painters ( 1856).

This is "The last word" quote in the Times today, and the view of Ruskin.
Each early spring we plan to go up to Kirby Lonsdale to walk the Lune and climb the steps up to "Ruskin's View".

We park the car at the old bridge and take the river path along towards the town. We've been doing it since forever it seems and yet it still makes us sigh with the beauty of all that is there.

Often the water is icy on the edges and makes wonderful patterns with stones.

By the time we get to the bottom of the steps I'm never sure if I'm going to make it to the top!

The river at this point is smooth and deceptively calm but underneath the currents coming from a couple of different directions merge and a fierce battle takes place beneath the surface.

Ruskin was an odd old fellow but he certainly knew a good view when he saw it , and the joy of getting to the top of the steps is rewarded by not only the sight across the river.......

 .........but the beauty of the ancient church yard that we then walk through to get some sustenance in the glorious Sun Inn.

Neither was he a slouch when it came to painting  watercolour landscapes. There are quite a few in the Abbott Hall Gallery in Kendal and I'm hoping that there will be some more in the big Watercolour Exhibition coming to London at the end of February.