Seeker Magazine

The English North Country

by Michael David Coffey

Drystone Walls

North country, dales, swales Clouded gray mantle covering the ancient sod Grit stone, millstone Cloisters and old souls Swallowed up in a culture lost in timeless time Still, sullen, the clouds hang somberly cloaking the day Oak, beech, sycamore swathing the rolling hills Down to the river, brown flowing in history Past farm, village and broken priory Ruins, crosses and moss gnarled tombstones Yew trees tortured in their infinite ancestry Watchful, silent sentinels to timeless passage To the river and the limestone hills patterned in smoke gray crazy walls, dry stone Hewn and gathered in timeless time

Heptonstall

Churchyard tombs enclaved in centuries past Green felt moss slabs and silent death Here among the windswept heather The cobbled ways and silvered birch You lay in silent life Caught in the melancholy of a time Past, lived and immortal

Author's Note: Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, is a remote part of the Pennines, high on windswept moors ... Sylvia Plath Hughes is buried in the new part of the cemetery. The picture shows the old church that was destroyed in a storm ... the 'new' church which is over 100 years old stands next to it. In the poem I tried to capture my feeling about her in the context of the place. Sylvia Plath Forum

Wycoller

In witches spells among the gurgling waters Washing shrunken stones, scarred with old visions Across the packhorse bridge twin arches bent, constrained The agony of infinite toll and whispering hairbells In the dense grassy verge Free in a blue breeze We pass the trodden way through arches of ash, hawthorn Climbing past the packer's slab striding the mill stream Where once the waterwheel churned incessantly But now the dark past reverberates in the ghostly silence Black clouds encompass the vale And rain splashes on the rutted tracks So turning we pass again the hall, once warm and welcoming Now stark in ruin and green in soft moss Lichens encrusted on sensual soaked stone The old fireplace, majestic in its naked isolation A meeting place for new and old An epitaph to when and where A dream of past times, of love and lechery And sullen orange embers extinguished in the blue smoke

Note: Wycoller is a small hamlet in a secluded valley near Colne, Lancashire. As a young boy I went there many times with my granny. The old hall fascinated me and I imagined it in the days when the lord and lady hosted their guests in front of the huge fireplace. The valley itself is very ancient with several bridges .. the packhorse bridge and a large single stone slab bridge among them. I visited there again this August and found that it is largely unchanged. Across the moors is Haworth and it is reputed that the Bronte sisters sometimes visited the place. In the book "Jane Eyre," the description of Ferndean Manor is reminiscent of Wycoller Hall. (There is more on Wycoller at this site, including pictures of the Hall fireplace and the bridges: Pendle.Net: Wycoller)

Photographs and Poems Copyright 2000 by Michael David Coffey

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Letter to the Author:
Michael David Coffey at mdcoffey@aol.com

Visit Michael David Coffey's poetry website:Deep Waters