Poetry Corner

Hollows to Valleys

It begins under the float of a sea mist beading jacket and sleeve, while, under our boots, iced hollows snare unwary walkers.

Our pale breath vanishes, puffs into a ghostly haar.

Where rain has pooled in lower edges under banks, the path is claggy, clogged, no longer the crust or apple crumble of sweetly scented autumn.

Instead, from chestnut coppices stark with cold, a pheasant clatters, squawks, shatters the silence.

On either side the path, sloping fields run west, run east before the knife-edged northerly as we bear south, wind on our backs for a winter walk where downlands are folded in great valleys like grooves cut by giants — sweeping, swooping low.

Now under our feet lie the curve & curl of rust & chocolate waves & weaves — of furrows still gleaming from the plough-blades' cut.

Lizzie Ballagher