Mud and Magic

On Monday I went for my patch walk on the dullest, muddiest, coldest day - seemingly uninspiring, dreary and wildlife-free.

I thought it seemed SO uninspiring that I'd try, as an exercise, to elevate it into something less mundane, simply by making the effort to turn it into something creative. So here is my poem...

Mud and Magic

Slanted sleat threads white as it dwindles earthwards
The weakling fuit of a drab sky

The mudded rivulet of a track rises gently raising my steps
Quag and ruck swap places with mire and bog

I climb the spine of a buried giant, the
Back​filled landfill, now grassy ridge on former midden
As a bullfinch schoolboy-whistles

A kestrel is animated by my approach, turning it from
Standing sentinel still to flightly air-snipping shears

Faint shapes of distant Pennine foothill are mist masked
A Guassian blur applied to the mast on Winter Hill

A bramble scraped attrition of mud-sticky path takes me to the
Moss bearded wall at the entrance to Rough Park Wood

A processional arch of elephant's trunck beeches
And burred bowled birches with large
Museum reptiles of fallen branches

A joyful hazel trimmed full of yellow dancing catkins seems to
Have slipped in from a another time and place on this dull day
As if by singing ringing magic

I think as an exercise it was largely successful (irrespective of the quality of the poem!). It was interesting to have an altered focus - trying to turn the sights and sounds of the walk into words.

Today I retraced my steps taking a photo of the path every 50 steps. I added a fairly old music track on mine to turn it into a video - it may not be the most riverting video of all time  but, again, the point was to try to elevate the mundane.

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