ON FERAL GROUND

We scattered his ashes on the fell -
a spur of rock and moss beside the beck;
our feet snagging on roots and stones,
the weather gods protesting -
Thunder, Lightning, Rain.

We struggled against them as he'd battled every day
to force the discipline of fence and wall
on difficult land - these feral fields
half-tamed as barn cats, ready to run wild
sprout rush and gorse on a sour whim.

He trusted to rightness, as I never have
An instinctive balance in nature
that would always come to good.
Each well-intentioned action
cancelling out the bad. Neither bailiff

nor flood, murrain nor arctic freeze,
the failures of bone,
muscle, joint or tongue
could temper his faith in the one true north
we were all headed for.

That has gone with him. Six months on
the wind has sifted his ash across the boggy margins,
rain dissolved his atoms down to the peat.
Only his grit remains, stubbornly
among the roots of the grass.

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