Gorse on Bray Head

This was the last time I climbed the Head with the dogs, before it was cordoned off. It was a lovely evening, spring very much in evidence, the air heady with gorse, wave after wave of coconut body lotion. 

I walked my usual route, the longer but less abruptly steep woodland path that runs parallel to the big field near the car park then uphill, following the private road to the highest residence on the Head, a farm. 

When I emerged from the woods I noticed groups of young people out amongst the gorse, drinking and laughing. Entering the last bit of woodland, I saw others roaming up alongside via the other, steeper route. I though of saying something to them, about how hanging out in large groups means that they have a good chance of bringing the virus home to parents or older relatives. But that would be the language of responsibilities and consequences, a foreign tongue to most teenagers. And I was conscious of how I'd appear, a strange old bald git giving out, putting a damper on  everything. 

So I just kept my distance and made my way to the top, looped around the big, vacant cross and started down again, careful not to step on the scree and slippery, well-trodden earth of the main paths. There was just enough light to see the way. 

Next day the paths were cordoned off, the big yellow Covid notice as vivid in its way as the gorse.

I tried to write something about that evening climb: about the confluence of dusk and bunches of flaming gorse petals, the lovely intoxicating aroma, the perspective above the town, the sea surrounding us and the eerie sense of an overwhelming but strangely abstract global event, racing across the world like a quiet, invisible tsunami whose weight would fall only on the unlucky fraction of a percent, whose numbers might nevertheless be enough to break the health system and collapse the economy. I took a few notes and wrote some early drafts. Eventually the poem seemed to flow and find its shape, melting 'like a piece of ice on a hot stove' as Frost put it.

It was taken by Carol Ann Duffy who curates Manchester University's Write Where We Are Now project, an archive of poems responding to the crisis. Here's a link to my contribution:https://www.mmu.ac.uk/write/gorse-bray-head.php