St.Raven’s Edge

This morning I gave the van a run and inflicted us both on a very nice young chap at Halfords who accepted the gauntlet of trying to fix my front headlamp https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2659177111662625781 He acknowledged how awkward it was but did a great job and we headed happily back home to make some malt loaf to fuel and coax me through the coming week.

The sun emerged and so I went for the rapid access route to the fells from the top of Kirkstone to get some big gulps of fresh air and a shot of vitamin D before submerging into the week again. As for that dazzle in the West (looking across Windermere to Morecambe Bay), there’s nothing for it ... it’s got to be Norman ...

Sea to the West - Norman Nicholson

When the sea’s to the west
The evenings are one dazzle -
You can find no sign of water.
Sun upflows the horizon;
Waves of shine
Heave, crest, fracture,
Explode on the shore;
The wide day burns.
In the incandescent mantle of the air.

Once, fifteen,
I would lean on handlebars,
Staring into the flare,
Blinded by looking,
Letting the gutterings and sykes of light
Flood into my skull.

Then, on the stroke of bedtime,
I’d turn to the town,
Cycle past purpling dykes
To a brown drizzle
Where black-scum shadows
Stagnated between backyard walls.
I pulled the warm dark over my head
Like an eiderdown.

Yet in that final stare when I
(Five times, perhaps, fifteen)
Creak protesting away -
The sea to the west,
The land darkening -
Let my eyes at the last be blinded
Not by the dark
But by the dazzle.