THE LAST DAY OF ANOTHER HOME HOLIDAY

I sat on a low stone wall

Watching the blue blood of the azaleas

Spatter on Haworth’s cobbles.

A seamless transparency of rain

Lowering over the turning trees

My thoughts drifting to Claudel’s

‘Five Great Odes’, to the stone marker

To the swathes of heather.

I stood on the moor top

Where the tracks cross

The fellside green

The fellside ochre,

Shifting reflections

Of C?zanne’s last winter.