Lumb Bank

First day here and time to write,
notebook, journal and keyboard lie expectant.

Hear the slow tick of the dining room clock

and wonder, did others watch fine Yorkshire drizzle
pass along the valley, as trees accumulated
their autumn rust and the mill chimney stood inactive?

Did they too shuffle awkwardly round one another

in the kitchen, searching for cups, preoccupied 
with routines and lack of sleep (or surfeit), 
sifting projects in their heads, churning ideas

as, all the while, The Poet’s images of moorland 

and valley whispered from the walls?

This community’s not shy of work;

the house, built solid against rare summer heat

and, oftener, winter gales, the backdrop

to human effort, determination not just

to weave a way across a rugged landscape

but doggedly excel in deed and thread and word.

Lumb’s hospitality is born of shared vocation,

witness walls garnering photos of poets long gone

and others writing now as though the need for words

were first and foremost in every enterprise.

And all the while Sylvia lies unburied in her grave,

inviting homage, daring us, ‘Write now!’

© Janet Henderson October  2017