How to begin writing this down? Shall it be a simple inventory? A list of parts. Names. Dates. Genealogies. Sound
begetting sound. Endless melody. If I were to say – a robin sings in the trees across the field from this coppice – would that be enough? Could you flesh things out from such a meagre outline? Or should I describe its song?
Onomatopoeia. But the bird has long fallen silent before the words begin to form. And what of the other sounds – the constant polyphony? Distant hum of motorway traffic. Delicate rattle of leaf against branch. Everything in between. I fill the page as best I can, replace the diary under a stone, and
retrace my steps down the darkening lane. But as I walk back under the eaves of those trees, I ask myself
– could any film, recording or photograph tell you this? That whilst I dwelt within that wooded chamber, listening to those brief glimmers of song, I forgot about her, the river and its promise.

Richard Skelton

Mots clés poetry-life-spirituality

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And how to stop the rot? How to salvage something from time's passage? How long before the map makers decide to erase this structure completely? Before it becomes a nameless ruin? And then a mere pile of stones? Mossed over. Forgotten. How long before they lift its name from their charts and from our collective memory? The only thing I can do is fill the place with music.

Richard Skelton

Mots clés poetry-emptiness-ruins-nature

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A night of exhilaration, of boredom and terror, in which the merest of sounds took on other forms - grew large in the expanse of darkness. After several hours the sheep gradually stopped calling to each other from accross the river banks, and a brittle quiet descended. I desperately wanted to walk down to the water's edge. To see the black river in the moonlight. But a mixture of reason and fear kept me locked along the safe paths high above.

Richard Skelton

Mots clés poetry night aloneness river affraid landings

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