Three years ago I moved from my old London town house up north to the countryside of the Peak District. It is only since the lockdown initiated by the Coronavirus however that I have truly discovered my new home. I would often go on walks on the weekends without maps, sticking to the well trodden paths. Recently I have felt the urge to go off the paths, stray into the wilderness, and discover the secrets hidden away from the eyes of man.
Someone once told me that even water has memory. Wandering through the old pine forests with nothing for company but birdsong and the bubbling of woodland streams and unearthing the overgrown ruins of generations past, I couldn’t help but wonder: What do you remember?
Tell me rustling rivlet
Do you remember still
Your days as a dew drop
Upon my window-sill?
.
Atlantic waves parading
Drawn in by the moon
Were you once a rain cloud
Or a tropical monsoon?
.
Adrift amid a Baltic squall
An Odyssey astride Aegean tides
Does Posidon decorate his halls
With castaways and sailors pride?
.
Mountain brooks and Pine-cloaked springs
I wonder if you know
That as the droplets gave you form
So you form the eternal Ocean flow
Chris Black Writes 