With the breeze over the pines,

a northern angel,

wings spread,

Feathers like fingers,

Feeling, catching  

Every nuance.

A master of energy,

you exploit the faintest

currents of air. 

You hardly seem to move,

No beat, no flap, just

a hint of tilt,  and an

opening like a fan,

of wingtip and tail.  

You close the span,

narrow the profile,

incline the head

bend the wings

and you are a missile,

swift across the valley.

And then, sensing,

A rise of air and heat,

you spread out, stop,   

tilt, spiral

up, up, up,

high, so high,

you are just a dot

against a patch of bluer sky.

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Anyway the last thing I remember was filling up the car with petrol at the Tesco services in Fulwood.  It was nearly empty and cost nearly £40.  Next I was lying on the stretcher in the ambulance.  They said I was going to the Northern General.  ‘Oh No!’, I said.  So I must have lost best part of an hour.

From what I could piece together,  I had driven through the Mayfield Valley and up to the junction with the Ringinglow Road.  That was where the crash occurred.  A Ford Fiesta had run into my Corsa. Both cars were write offs.  The Fiesta must have crashed into the driver’s door.  The three lower ribs on the right side were fractured, there was grass on my clothes and  I was passing blood when I first arrived. But what happened?  Did I fall asleep?  Was I preoccupied and just pulled out? 

Post traumatic amnesia seems to have the purpose of protecting the individual of the full impact of the occasion.  But is it really purposeful.  Isn’t it just something that happens?  I wonder if the shock just wipes the memory, like a computer exposed to an electric discharge, and only afterwards we ascribe some kind of protective purpose to it. People have told me that I was asking the same questions over and over again – like, where was my computer and what happened to the other driver?.    

But the memory is not completely lost.  It is there like an undercover agent, unseen, unknown, but influencing our thoughts and actions in ways that betray its intentions.  And, of course, post traumatic amnesia can be recovered under hypnosis.        

In the meantime, I have a black hole in my universe, that sucked a hour of my life into it.  It happened once before on this very unit, when they were trying to provoke my cardiac arrhythmia and my heart stopped.  I should stop coming to the Chesterman Unit.

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The building’s in scaffold, a big yellow crane

Is removing the tiles that cover the nave

And disturbing the sleep of the souls in their graves

Oh, they’re raising the roof of the church today.

They’re raising the roof of the church today!

The foreman’s come round to check it’s ok.

The boys are excited and shouting, ‘Hooray!’

They’re having such fun!  What more can I say?

Cos they’re raising the roof of the church today.

They’re raising the roof of the church today.

The frantic incumbent looks ashen and grey.

The Duke and the Duchess are in disarray.

They cancelled the trials since it poured yesterday!

Now they’re raising the roof of the church today!

They’re raising the roof of the church today.

The organist thunders, parishioners pray

To God, their salvation on this judgement day

Now the pathway to heaven’s wide open to gaze

Since they’ve raised up the roof on the church today.

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Windless drops, a softer tap,

that hist, slipt and glist;

a gentler keening, a meaning in mist,

its wraiths clinging to the side of the hill;

the greening of reverence.  . 

Narcissus bowed its head as the early bird

Uttered a muffled refrain, and black-cross daws,

glid down from the shadow of the rocks,

under the eye of the hare, the fierce velvet stags

to the ducks in their fearless puddles.

And in sombre Edensor,

the dark swell of the organ

dragged a sigh from the penitent.

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you like the light,

the freedom of dawn, when

scampering winds shepherd clouds

over the hills of your dreams.     

Not for you, the beguiling song of the blackbird,

The one you cannot trust.  

You prefer the high rise worry of larks,

the pied piping of oystercatchers,

the querulous slide of the curlew.

Not for you, the hooting melancholy wood

but the thrill of the moor;

the paraglide of pipits,  the thrum

and squeak of roller coaster snipe,       

the tumble and whoop of plovers.  

Not for you the furtive stoat in its crevice,

in the windy wall.

You prefer the clear lines of the wheatear,

a bright soliloquy in pastel, a promise in slate,

an innocent primrose gift.                 

Romance is not for you; too intense.

You’ve no time

to waste on pain and sighs.

You want no make believe, no lies,

just constancy ….. and life.

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