Location: Various location around Pooley Country Park.
A Cry
(Located on Owl sculpture by the visitors' centre)
You screech, you owl
and I saw you, owl-shape, brown
black against blue-fading sky, still
and you screech, and you screech
and I stand stock, take stock
still and I hear and I hear you
still again in the green-black, twisted
oak and you screech and I stand
and you screech
and you fly.
Janet Smith
You screech, you owl
and I saw you, owl-shape, brown
black against blue-fading sky, still
and you screech, and you screech
and I stand stock, take stock
still and I hear and I hear you
still again in the green-black, twisted
oak and you screech and I stand
and you screech
and you fly.
Janet Smith
Them Up There Don't Know Us Down Here Exist
They pass so fast a blink
might obfuscate our park
and Pooley’s rumoured spooks be missed
in the kiss of this bypass, and leave
the white persistence of a maid, a silent boy,
or echo of a squalling child.
Unnoticed, real wraiths - a shaft
where miners pitted picks
against an unseen Earth to search
the seamless shadows for a deeper shade
- buried spectral sunlight, stored,
to spark our hearths with ancient warmth.
Here, concealed beneath this bridge,
where diamond echoes play
on steel and concrete parallels
and chocolate water carves through pit-waste land,
unheard by them our loudest sounds
return to us, remade as ghosts.
Gary Carr
might obfuscate our park
and Pooley’s rumoured spooks be missed
in the kiss of this bypass, and leave
the white persistence of a maid, a silent boy,
or echo of a squalling child.
Unnoticed, real wraiths - a shaft
where miners pitted picks
against an unseen Earth to search
the seamless shadows for a deeper shade
- buried spectral sunlight, stored,
to spark our hearths with ancient warmth.
Here, concealed beneath this bridge,
where diamond echoes play
on steel and concrete parallels
and chocolate water carves through pit-waste land,
unheard by them our loudest sounds
return to us, remade as ghosts.
Gary Carr
Loft
I glide gently over the resurgent mound
hunting prey
black-bleak slag now overgrown
with lichen, liverwort, fireweed and birch;
finger-like feathers caress the breeze;
close wings and dive -
rise again into the sparkling expanse
twisting, turning in buzzards’ dance.
And below, vista of rolling farm acres
marred by a grey ribbon,
the relentless rumble reverberates
as cars career uncaringly,
confined to the carriageway,
shrouded in pungent petrol fumes.
Janis Kind
hunting prey
black-bleak slag now overgrown
with lichen, liverwort, fireweed and birch;
finger-like feathers caress the breeze;
close wings and dive -
rise again into the sparkling expanse
twisting, turning in buzzards’ dance.
And below, vista of rolling farm acres
marred by a grey ribbon,
the relentless rumble reverberates
as cars career uncaringly,
confined to the carriageway,
shrouded in pungent petrol fumes.
Janis Kind
Ladies Of The Wood
Sweet humus carpets silver birch’s woodland
in stark contrast to roughly strewn coalscape,
once Pooley Mine’s waste heap,
now nature’s reclaimed backdrop,
circled by slender, soaring trees.
These self-seeding stately ladies
stand regally in their summer finery,
of gentle grey, diamonded with carbon black,
topped by emerald arched crowns.
Their short lifespans symbolise purification
and renewal providing succour for various ills;
maternal instinct still survives as, life extinct,
rotting trunk provides sanctuary for dependants:
fungi, lichens, invertebrates, mosses and birds.
Legends and myths mingle:
folklore honours them as protectors
against daemons and witchcraft,
bizarre then that twigs are also recorded
as being formed into besoms.
Terri Jolland
in stark contrast to roughly strewn coalscape,
once Pooley Mine’s waste heap,
now nature’s reclaimed backdrop,
circled by slender, soaring trees.
These self-seeding stately ladies
stand regally in their summer finery,
of gentle grey, diamonded with carbon black,
topped by emerald arched crowns.
Their short lifespans symbolise purification
and renewal providing succour for various ills;
maternal instinct still survives as, life extinct,
rotting trunk provides sanctuary for dependants:
fungi, lichens, invertebrates, mosses and birds.
Legends and myths mingle:
folklore honours them as protectors
against daemons and witchcraft,
bizarre then that twigs are also recorded
as being formed into besoms.
Terri Jolland
Reflected Strata: The Riddled Veins Of Pooley Park
4. They breathed me. They wore me. They bore me to bed.
I bent their knees. I bought their sight. I brought them warmth and bread.
They’ve upped and gone yet still I lay – unseen - a thing made king by weight and days and green.
3. Listen: a little lady flicks page corners in the tinnitus of summer. Look: a hint of winter’s Christmas tinsel’s on the river – ultramarine, smashed gasmask faced, fishing rod bodied, Tinkerbelle winged. Drawn to purity like Polesworth pilgrims, its presence is reward and litmus paper. A brittle life. For its own species’ sake it may or might survive; for ours it must.
2. A minute’s silence. / Soon we’ll talk to Coventry; / here, calm blitzes lips. / Our painted barge can rest, smoke, / it’s the world’s turn to swan-glide. /
Poems haunt this haven. / Bard rambles with Boudicca; / time and herons fish; / hill, hall, cob and pen are mute; / myth chokes lost millwheels like Dock. /
Meaning, once hunted, / now snows thick as fireweed seed. / Let the blind rush by, / we’ll dawdle, stare, be lovers, / bruised land, and man, recovers. /
1. When reverence-insistent Abbey or the Priory’s romanced ruined stones grip an evening sky’s light rays like maypole ribbons, I can’t help but imagine God has turned Himself into a child and hid behind a cloud. He, giggling with delight, knows we can’t see Him; we, awed by beauty, believe we can.
Hench-4
I bent their knees. I bought their sight. I brought them warmth and bread.
They’ve upped and gone yet still I lay – unseen - a thing made king by weight and days and green.
3. Listen: a little lady flicks page corners in the tinnitus of summer. Look: a hint of winter’s Christmas tinsel’s on the river – ultramarine, smashed gasmask faced, fishing rod bodied, Tinkerbelle winged. Drawn to purity like Polesworth pilgrims, its presence is reward and litmus paper. A brittle life. For its own species’ sake it may or might survive; for ours it must.
2. A minute’s silence. / Soon we’ll talk to Coventry; / here, calm blitzes lips. / Our painted barge can rest, smoke, / it’s the world’s turn to swan-glide. /
Poems haunt this haven. / Bard rambles with Boudicca; / time and herons fish; / hill, hall, cob and pen are mute; / myth chokes lost millwheels like Dock. /
Meaning, once hunted, / now snows thick as fireweed seed. / Let the blind rush by, / we’ll dawdle, stare, be lovers, / bruised land, and man, recovers. /
1. When reverence-insistent Abbey or the Priory’s romanced ruined stones grip an evening sky’s light rays like maypole ribbons, I can’t help but imagine God has turned Himself into a child and hid behind a cloud. He, giggling with delight, knows we can’t see Him; we, awed by beauty, believe we can.
Hench-4
Black Swan Possibility
Drayton called the swans milk-white
redundant then when all swans were,
though milk might rarely be so pure
as plumage silver in its flight
through streaky whey-blue sky. Perhaps
the poet, loyal, sought to praise
the spotlessness of local cows,
or did he ponder new found maps
their empty edge from where might creep
unthought of zoologica that grew
in all dimensions whole, as true
as monsters out of reason's sleep,
and in all spectra ever - never - seen,
Swans could be purple, red or green?
Jacqui Rowe
redundant then when all swans were,
though milk might rarely be so pure
as plumage silver in its flight
through streaky whey-blue sky. Perhaps
the poet, loyal, sought to praise
the spotlessness of local cows,
or did he ponder new found maps
their empty edge from where might creep
unthought of zoologica that grew
in all dimensions whole, as true
as monsters out of reason's sleep,
and in all spectra ever - never - seen,
Swans could be purple, red or green?
Jacqui Rowe
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