Across the Stone

As the land was slipping, her fingers gripping
   
   the hypothermic air,

she felt like a worn quartz pebble borne
   
   straight down the scarp to stare

into the sun, which soon was done
   
   with comforting the Peak.

Tree limbs were white as bat bones. Night
   
   had come. The tors were bleak.

Then slow as trilobites, as sly
   
   as wind erodes a summit,

light brushed the land like a gentle hand,
   
   and soon began to strum it.

She walks alone across the stone.
   
   Below her slopes the scree,

and farther still, beneath this hill,
   
   Dove Valley’s fertile sea,

where cattle graze and feel the rays
   
   and limestone underneath,

while stoneflies swirl, green ferns uncurl,
   
   and hare bound through the heath.

She walks across the fields and moss
   
   of the White Peak and the Dark,

where ashwood, pine, bright celandine,  
   
   the wagtail, and the lark

all know she’s here. This rocky sphere
   
   has flown again through space

to warm the shale, gritstone, and dale,
   
   put color in the face

of the plateau, dissolve the snow,
   
   and stir this rough terrain, 

where now she walks across the rocks
   
   with a calm she can’t explain.

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(Appeared in Victorian Violet Press.)