A Stranger on Bickershaw

I am a stranger here.

There are some familiar trees
but they look at me with different eyes

like the Highland cattle who have come from Lincolnshire –
the ginger bullocks with their long curved horns.

I want insects to walk in the tracks
of my wellies as I pick up
my mallet, spade,
hessian mat,
wooden pegs,
cardboard guard
carefully labelled with
an arrow pointing up lest I forget
my sense of direction in the wind and rain.

But they will not trust me for a long while yet
nor will the lapwings, the redwings, the fieldfare…

I want to be more than a cardboard cut-out
just miming and even more so when
I remember the miners –
hard hats, spades,
picks

(when I Google Bickershaw it says more
about the colliery than the village),

sinking shafts to the Plodder seam,

the falling cage and…

I am here planting trees
sometimes overturning a stone
or a piece of coal the chuck chuck chuck
of my mallet a reminder of all the years of hammering

and I am afraid of the absence of the Whistlers
who once upon a time gave a warning.

I am chucking out their memories.

Oh birds return oh birds return!

I believe this rod of willow is stronger
than my prayers and I take faith in knowing
it will outgrow the touch of a stranger.

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