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Sunday 1
November 2015
November
heath at twilight and the fog
Is
sodden-thick, like wadding stuffed around
The
looming gloom of beech and chestnut trees,
Gone
vague as distant mountains; vista is
Destroyed,
there’s only thick miasma, brown
As
rats’ fur, clumping greasily on the grass.
Within
that bulging mucous murk, made fawn
And
grainy by the orange village lights,
There’s
a sound of giggling girls and barking dogs
But
nothing seen.
In
minutes I’m alone,
Walking
the metalled track to the incline’s lip
Which
sinks into the woods. The village lights
Are
distant, fading fast. A racing dog
With
winking collar angles through the fog –
A
shrouded walker follows with a torch;
They
meld into the bilious gloom. My footsteps
Crackle
and die. This mild moist night, I sweat.
The
clammy lychgate creaks; I pass into
The
woods, descending into coal-black dark.
The
leaf-fall crunches underfoot but makes
No
difference to the swelling touch-felt silence.
Tramping
the sandy bridlepath, night sight
Of
sorts develops, though all it manages
Is
grey mass told from dark mass; hint and squint
Are
used to guess the fog crowding the crowns
Of
oak and maple, tamping every fissure
With
a sheeny sponge that’s matt and grubby to
The
eye. And weird, at waist, outleaning mounds
Of
rotting ferns define themselves as grey
And
use-blanched dishcloths.
At the wood’s black depth
I
leave the mud-sand path and strike into
The
trees; I have the untracked route by
heart
But
all is changed by the cloud-thick darkness, brewed
By
the bundling fog, infilling vistas used
In
night sight to adjudge felt place and distance.
And
since my last walk leaf drop has occurred
So
that a sour-sharp mulch of birch and ash
And
oak leaves, shrouding every half-hint waymark,
Has
merged with trunk-trapped fog to make a screed
Of
indirection that’s unreadable.
Stymied,
I search that sludge-like dark for glims
Of
fallen birch boughs, used to point my way;
Mole-blind,
I miss them, shambling warily
In
arcs to find a route; shins, knees and
hands
Scour
bush and bramble, flesh-stung, till at last
By hope and instinct in that flea-brown sump,
I
fetch up panting on a stream’s wet bank.
As if with cataract, I foot-feel hints
For
the double plank across, now lost in
leaf-pile
Which
also swamps the stream; eventually,
I
ease across, toe-led and darkness-blind.
On
the far bank with step and step and squint,
I
track the stream until the woodfloor slopes
And,
thankful to respond, I turn uphill
Through
tree stands clogged with solid palls of night
So
that sensation is an only guide –
That
instinct-memory that shifting masses
Truthfully
tell the way. Short-breathed, ache-limbed,
I
reach my goal at incline’s top. And stand.
