Two Poems by Yvonne Reddick

Deep Peak

Bleaklow

The day the two of us waded the stream in a gully
to reach the wreckage, passing
bone-clutter and wool-rags of a ewe caught in the snow,
a lurking stink of rot.

You spotted the wing, a torn fragment
of alloy feathers. Then a rib of fuselage.
A metal eagle plunged, burning, to earth.

The captain, the navigator, ten men
sailed into a sea of fog
where Higher Shelf Stones reared up.

Halifax, Wellington,
Sabre, Liberator, Superfortress,
flights earthed and shattered.

And there you stood,
sketching the view through a glassless plane window:
the memorial, ranked crosses and a scatter of poppies,

your charcoal tracing the corroding hull,
rivets, the compressors’ broken lungs,
solder poured on peat as if still molten.

Love, you were my north, my south, my north-north west,
my lodestone and gritstone.
And it’s even bleaker now, without you.

Featherbed Moss

Waking in your tent
creaking myself out of sleep
and waiting for you to spark the burner,
your kiss honest as strong tea.

You were my north, my south, my north-north west.

Kinder Low

Grit-cut statuary, warriors frozen in stone.

‘A chess-world of top-heavy rooks and pawns’
no, that’s not it –
‘A chess-world of top-heavy knights and queens’ – there.

And where are you now, my love, my lifeline,
my sweet rush, my lark-song, my birch in springtime.

Stanage

I’m a girl again, fledged in edges,
dithering, slithering, scrabble-footed.
The bite of rock on knuckles.

Slip –
a yell that trails behind the fall –
rope tautens –
holds.

You were my north, my south, my north-north west.

Wildboar Clough

Toehold teetering on air’s edge,
the off-balance tussle to scramble the fissure.

And you are – where?

A feint of the light in a photo
where we shiver and grin in sleet, each other’s shelter.
Your fingerprints on sandstone,
initials chipped in rock.

No, we can’t be friends.

Fern Owl

Two of you flew over Pendle Hill
as my love and I followed the path to its brow.
I strained my ears to hear you halloo over the wood.

Flame-marks ring each eye’s inferno.
Horned head, furred toes curl to hooks,
you are a spectre to shrews, woe of voles.

Your wooing is a catlike yowl,
you swoop slow over the moor
to disembowel moles for your owlets.

Once, mothers placed your hush-soft feathers
in babies’ cribs, to soothe their sleep.
An owl’s egg lit the eyes of the blind.

A ghost in smoke, will-o’-the-wisp.
Could the two of us
return as short-eared owls,

haunt the broken spine of Pendle Hill,
roost over moor-pools, take wing
over Malkin Tower, Hunter’s Oak, Mancowls Ing.

Yvonne Reddick is a poet, nonfiction writer and environmental filmmaker. Her first book, Burning Season (Bloodaxe, 2023), won the Laurel Prize for Best First UK Collection of Ecopoetry.