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.