My Chasms

 

[Opening:]

It's many years since I was shown
the crystal singing in the stone
and given feeling felt the breeze
curl up exhausted in the trees
and then came home alert and heard
the single singing of a bird
above the droning sounding-dome
of Burnley Road,

but I've since been up to the green hawthorn
where it issues in the shales of gritstone
and heard the curlew flute, and then felt stranger
chilled in dismay, an unwell child in danger.

[Note:]

My Chasms is a deep-in-conscience pit. I got the name only indirectly from my own, way back when my son was living with his mother down i’Brig, and not long after he had learned to write at school, he was asked to write on the subject “My Father”, and he claimed that he had Three, and one of them, My Kasm, lived up on a hill. Reading his essay, I saw me. Another tale to go with that, I’ve heard (and if he comes to read this page he might well contradict me) was of an assumption that he’d come to, that the recital he was taught that starts “Our Father which art in Heaven” must refer to My Kasm, up on the hill. Well, he knows better now. My most precious illusion is that we do get on all right. But this note may not illuminate a lot about My Chasms.  

[Close:] 

There are them birds as flirt.
In fact there is a company of cocks and hens,
and I'm with them
refluttering over all our waterfalls
that dash between the trees in unison:

My Chasms.