The Brigand
I only wished to start a new one.
May this be home? Millstone grit and heather?
Undulating pastures and drystack fences?
The dales once ruled by the Brigantes?
A place this ancient ‒ where days glide by so slow
and human presence is not a fundamental trait ‒
surely wrings my deepest strings.
Lost in it, on my own, carrying nothing,
and nothing loaded on my mind ‒
it looks, sounds and smells
like I had always been part of it.
Everything fits just right, and I feel good.
Like I had been treading these moors
and my thoughts ascending these ridges ‒
to see what runs away beyond the hilltops ‒
since the very moment I was born.
Still, it is when the light abates
and cloudbanks slither down to cloak the slopes ‒
emulating lowland fog ‒
when the lines of trees fade on the horizon
and silence appropriates each quiver of life ‒
coming to nestle in the most distant memories ‒
that I do find myself at home.
But sooner or later the sun ‒as precious as gold
and of such rare beauty on this drowsy, sullen land,
orchestrator of grandiose skies ‒
reminds me who I am, or who at least I used to be,
where my roaming soul indeed belongs,
hurling me a thousand miles southeast.
For I am a brigand here ‒
my loot the eternal swish of branches in the westerlies
and the instancy of desperate sunsets over the crests.
A sly usurper, a thief of space and time.
All while galaxies out there keep on drifting,
and the clock cannot be zeroed.
I only wished to start a new one.