Old Granite

Granite holds the moors, jewelled veins running deep

She lives alone, tending her stove and walking the tors

Her cheeks weathered from the passing of solitary years

Crow’s feet sweep from her deep-set eyes -

eyes flecked warm as a buzzard’s wing

but her voice is harsh from silence,

cracked and wavering.

Gorse catches at her thinning hair,

strands stretched across the unforgiving thorns

a silver prayer like gossamer spiderwebs.

Long into the dusk,

her feet tread the old way.

Soft as a gull’s wing,

mist clings to dry-stone walls

where roots hold the crumbling rocks together.

And Granite, she curls her knotted fingers

in the bracken and sinks her aching knees

into moss, thick and green.

She holds the moors,

she holds her weary body against the receding tide.

Loam and tin, tree and river-deep -

change eats her skeleton thin.

Old Granite is purpled with heather

and stark in her work as the world turns

barren at her edges.