The OtterheadLakes
A walk with four fellow poets, June 2007
The Greyhound
Staple Fitzpaine, Somerset
It’s on a narrow English road,
which is full of curves and sightless corners,
in a good country way. And sudden hills
and narrow valleys, which the modern car
takes at a breeze. I know
we take the corners too fast –
it’s as if we’re racing the weather.
And we assume it’s safe ahead
where blameless tourists
could be snapping the view from the road
or moving off in their hired car
oblivious of native traffic. I am driving down
to The Greyhound, then,
to a rendezvous in its green hollow,
where I will wait until the others come,
observing that the walls of the pub,
grey, white and blue-grey stone,
are just the colours for summer
and warm the deepening light that threatens
rain: more than a few spots.
The all important question
… for those invited to take a seat in the back
at the navigator’s calm insistence:
“I’m navigating” and his tight possession
of the map and the undoubted need
for three to go in the back is:
who goes in the middle?
To make it worse the car’s a three door hatchback
that makes you bow a second time
to the inevitable and put your back at risk
of mockery smeared on the door jamb.
So who will volunteer?
It’s too unwelcome to be openly discussed
and all eyes look away until the driver says
“Shall we get off, then?”
and someone has to give in.
The lakes
1. The upper lake
This was once a fancy place.
There were lawns for summer parties
round a big house which has gone now,
dissolved like a monastery. A few bricks or blocks
may be left but even those, if you could find them,
would give no clue what they had stood for.
All that remains is grass where the house
used to light up the night and send gramophone music
through the soft, damp air. Deep, uncut grass
which ripples from the lake to the wooded slope
down to the road. You can walk right past
without a sense of our human need to own
and to enclose spaces. The lake
is now the centre of the scene. It lies,
like all still water left to its devices, murky and green
in its basin. It is free now. Rescued,
you could almost say, by stark neglect
from all those traumas – boats, fishing lines, swimmers –
that cut and churned it. It has turned away from man-made
and pretends to an older style of existence.
It is going native, going wild …
while we move on and on, seemingly,
and keep ourselves to the path that remains
for want of any better way to go.
2. The lower lake
We encountered three dogs,
their owner, a fisherman
and several species near the jetty
of wild plants Tony knew the names of.
And saw evidence of fish: blips on the water
making bright expanding rings
that skimmed across the lake.
Even on this dullest of days
I felt that stir me in the silence of the place.
Out in the deep, I saw them: fish
broke the surface to catch small creatures
held by the tension. Blip!
on the water and a bright expanding ring.
The others talked of scrophularia
and hemlock water dropwort;
pointed out to me the spotted orchid
but my eyes were drawn to the water;
my spirit felt the tug of freedom.
The road to Churchinford
I have a metaphor of different appetites
to give a flavour of the walk: two gentlemen
were hungry, eating up the yards;
three ladies were not, and lightly nibbled at them
on our way to Churchinford. We, up ahead,
congratulated them, back there
for probing the hedgerow and, one imagines,
dissecting stems of inspiration: talk
and you feed images to your tingling fingers;
walk on and the waiting poem bubbles out.
We had each stepped out for his own purpose –
not the observation of roadside flowers
or the trees that sheltered us when it rained.
Nor even for the wind on our cheeks
or the joy of the switchback road. That much was clear,
but we left unspoken why we had conspired to hurry
(perhaps he did enjoy the switchback road).
We went stride for stride, still hungry and quite resolved.
The field of bullocks
Those bullocks gazed at us
with extreme fascination.
Walking fence posts,
their amazement seemed to convey,
were new in their experience.
They all crowded round and waited
while one brave soul
approached … and bounded off
with a laughing kick of his heels
when threatened by a shoo
of hand and voice. Down the sloping field –
and back with childish leaps
to seek his answer once again.
What were these creatures?
Puffed with strange skins
and walking, most curious of all,
without buckets or feed bags or sticks or wire
or any apparent paraphernalia
or dogs. Fence posts, then,
almost certainly. And moving fast.
The walk back to the car
On the last leg of our walk,
we passed by dark trees along the road
and fields of sombre grasses.
We reflected pools and puddles
in our unsuspecting eyes
and spoke in hushed voices.
We met sparkling drips from branches and leaves.
They fall fast, as Galileo had predicted, and they fell on us.
Randomly. There was an evening sky
that might remind us of a sleepy child
that would not go to bed …
but we ignored it
and spent the time talking
as companions have to talk
or seem unprofitable.
We hardly looked
except to watch for oncoming traffic
or an awkward stretch
of water on the road.
We talked about ourselves and poetry
and how we wondered,
in those idle moments
when such things are thought of,
at the confidence of other people.