An Eden Conception


A raindrop, unaccountably round,
plunges into Mallerstang;
Eden valley, Victorian dark,
the last great wilderness in England.

People came here briefly;
a monarch, a highwayman,
a thief, an earl, a tramp to see

rivers rise – the Ouse and Eden -
and if this raindrop falls an atom’s width
to the East, it runs away to York;
a molecule West; Carlisle.
On and on, the future forks
and this drop will not travel both.

Race into a great valley;
ginger gorse: an undomesticated,
wild, wet second world, happy

when earth and wind decide
what’s right and left, that it’s worth
a surging newborn driving to
a source: a smash, a violent birth.
Although it looks like a pastoral poem, the concept came from feelings of creation - at the critical moment of conception!



Picture