At the top of the hill
Entering liminal space
Here graced by name
730 stride-feet above the great Ocean’s lapping tongue:
Seven Crosses.
Crosses calling for whom, when or why?
When all that remains are two storm damaged pines
A blindly pointing fingerpost sign
And silent red earth soft breathing sun warmth.
This named point of transition
A gateway both opening and closing.
Leaving the town’s huddled houses, desire driven,
For a mile or so against gravity’s cling
The empty road encouraging to close the gap between here and there
Right to the very edge
The tipping point where shape does dissolve into another.
Turn right and begin to breathe out on descent.
Note the shifting of the air
The sweetest held deepest in the valley
Dropping thru Devon banked space..
For a brief moment Dartmoor’s shoulder holds my awareness
Landscape illuminated from within
As Aries first touch caresses great and small alike.
The Holloway cuts deep into the hill flank
Rearing banks of young grasses and raucous Hart’s Tongue
Sunbright primrose clusters born of light.
Breath drawn from a deeper source
The searching well at the bottom of a pit?
Light begins to close as hedgerow trees weave a net
Between heaven and earth; blind earthworm and floating buzzard.
Soon the road will become a shadowed tunnel to enter and leave by.
In this moment emergent leaves cluster, the sun falling eastward
Throws gently darkening patches across the floor.
A twist or two in the road and released into the new light,
Where the valley’s steep flanks touch
Tentative fingertip to fingertip at first, then the merging begins.
The Little Dart sings its own song
And shields its young below undercut banks
From Otter Eye and Heron Stalk,
Giving enough to keep enough, one thing leading to another.
Following the descent, now to cross the water,
Here is the other gate, another point of transformation
Shifting from one side to the other, east to west.
Here any dust of the world yet clinging can be released downstream
For Mother Ocean to repair and disentangle as rain might fall.
For this is coming home
Returning to that which you sense as being held,
Here where the Larch became a building then a home
A point where Origin and Return converge
A place where tears can fall and laughter rise
As we find our own way back to the source of within and without.
Here we can dance alone and together
Home within home without.
