Imagine you were a child with undiagnosed asthma and older brothers who always raced ahead when you were out walking. Supposing too that you were so completely urban in your upbringing that you always experienced a feeling of spatial illiteracy when asked to read a rural landscape…

This poem, on the other hand, is a meditation on a grown up recognition of the freedom of solitude. By Liz Lefroy.

.

This wind: it blows wild,

makes my hair shadows dance

on the pelleted grass.

I walk between plant pads

which ask nothing, not a name,

nor even a remark on their likeness

or difference from that time

which was another season

or in another place.

My pace, my breath

and its increase are my own:

the summit offers herself

as a permanence which

does not have to be climbed.

Behind me, and high

a kestrel hangs, though

I do not turn round to look,

and no one cries, Too late, too late!

And some footage of one of Liz’s readings can be found here.