Getting Lost

Summary

Clare did it, famously: once as a child

breaking his bounds, again as an adult,

losing one half of himself to the wild.

Unbound, bound. Finding the path by chance

and once in sight, home made strange.

One winter I found the edge of moor

and kept going across grass and heather

black with months of rain until nothing

I saw for miles made sense and a huge stone

wall presaged a fall of land. I feared the earth

would crumble beneath my feet, air cartwheel

my breath and stammered heartbeats

and the only thing to do was retreat,

in the corner of my eye the shapes of clouds.

How Churn Milk Joan became standing stone

at the boundary of three towns. How

stumbling across her long back at dusk

from the wrong side I thought myself lost,

facing south not north, and almost panicked

until a light glinted on at Foster Clough.