Wythburn bogs

After getting annoyed with my befuddled brain this morning with so many irritating jobs and logistics to try and sort out before work starts all over again I just abandoned ship and went out to stomp. It was freezing and I was going to head up to see the chaps but then Wythburn looked wonderfully murky and yuk and I haven't been up there for ages. With my new boots I was up for the challenge (the clue's in the name). When the weather is as bleak as it is it's sometimes good to face it out and head into the bleak. It was magnificent and I was soon seeing metaphors all over the place - Wallace Stevens seems to be my poet this week (below). With my back against a huge lump of rock, I looked down the hanging valley (extra) into a white nothingness and then, out of the corner of my eye I saw a wonderful hare. I had been lamenting not seeing any hares down in Norfolk when I was down there over Christmas. But now, here, up on a wild fell side in the fog was a huge hare. I like to think it was a mountain hare although it wasn't white, of course - I doubt it though. She quickly had the advantage over me and was off and away with all this that you can see in the blip as her home ground I had no chance of catching up!

'The hare is running races in her mirth; 
And with her feet she from the plashy earth 
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun, 
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.' (Wordsworth)


Metaphors of a Magnifico - Wallace Stevens

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.

This is old song
That will not declare itself . . .

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are
Twenty men crossing a bridge
Into a village.

That will not declare itself
Yet is certain as meaning . . .

The boots of the men clump
On the boards of the bridge.
The first white wall of the village
Rises through fruit-trees.
Of what was it I was thinking?
So the meaning escapes.

The first white wall of the village...
The fruit-trees...