Seven Crosses Hill

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.