Two poems from Olivia Walwyn’s debut collection Halcyon, the winner of the 2019 Straid Collection Award
Detour
Taking the ridge I encountered the wind
full-frontal, coming up over the plain
and the light buffeting, gentle on every
weathered gritstone boulder and clump
of winter heather. The path set with neat
cut stones. I balanced along, enlivened
just to feel the tilt of my weight in the wind’s
soft catch, torso, while the wind-swept
trees froze, their profiles an expression
of close-eyed pleasure. Just a small detour
but it meant that I had dipped back into
that stratum where I was more myself,
could see the perspective, like a boat
righting and gaining the crest – here I was
alive in a beautiful world, while the wind
flapped at my ear like a shook-out cloth.
Skyline Runners
Thrown almost off-pace: numbers
flappering in the gale – tugged
bulging from vests. Silence
settles on the head-down, tip-toeing along
field – like saplings, the tight-twined
grip of branches; tillers
holding to course – up to Winder
steadying themselves on the thrust –
the line of their own stems – kites
snagged on the firm prod
of step by step; pulled taut
back down, an incremental height
gain, unknowable from a distance.
They have shrunk into the hold
of themselves, behind the palaver
of flailing hoods, loose toggles, the slap
of each buffet – bright floods
break through as they gut-
gauge the view, that opens –
the sweep of field and hedge from under
the heathery clouds, before
they’re shoved back down, taunted
by spatters, undaunted –
at one with the squall and the bluster.
